


Prelude: the Whirling Way You Crashed Back into My Orbit

by viagiordano



Series: Of Space & Water [2]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Adult Content, F/F, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-06-28 00:15:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15696285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viagiordano/pseuds/viagiordano
Summary: "Real obsession needs an unconscious motivation behind it." - Damon Galgut.Prequel to The Void: Once healed but vengeful, Villanelle returns to London where she's forced to reflect on her wide selection of fantasies - the fantasies in which she finally gets the revenge she deserves. Unfortunately, even Villanelle's superior mind works in mysterious ways.





	1. Overview Effect

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Paris.  
> Compliant with character description by Luke Jennings.  
> Note: This is a prequel to the lengthy story called "The Void", which runs from October 2018 to July 2019. This prequel runs from May 2018 to October 2018. Therefore, chronologically this comes first, but **do yourself a favour and read the Void first, or the reading experience will lose some of its intended elements.**  
>  Thank you in advance for reading. Please, mind the tags: Graphic violence, Explicit sexual content & Very dark (I'm not kidding, I wish I was). There are also parts which could be interpreted as dub!con, but if you've read "The Void" from Eve's perspective, you'll know they aren't. If you're alright with this gang of tags, I sincerely hope you'll enjoy this different take on the events and dynamics of Villanelle's and Eve's relationship in the "Of Space & Water"-verse. 
> 
> _Il faut donner au diable son dû._ (Give the devil his due.)
> 
> On a personal note:  
> Special thanks to Kate/alicekittridge for her suggestions, and for being my half-a-world-away beta.  
> (This time around, I'll apologize in advance for what's to come. Sorry.)

_"The dark matter of you, a powerhouse of impossibility. Which goes to show you the resilient human heart is a thing of intergalactic, interwoven, incredible rarity."_ \- Nikita Gill

 *** 

The humid London air hits Villanelle in the face like she's opening a warm oven and peering in to check if the roast chicken's already done, but it isn't, and all she's left with are her burning cheeks and her hunger; it's the beginning of May, and when she steps off the tube with a hundred other people, the heat of the station makes her feel slightly sweaty and nauseous.

She's on her first job after ungraciously getting stabbed nearly two months ago, and as she ascends the stairs out of the Paddington Station, she tells herself that her current location is a pure coincidence. It's not like Ivan would send her to London - the home of Eve Polastri - on purpose if he actually had a choice; her next target just happens to live in the Belgravia area next to Westminster, and the bosses want Villanelle to carry out the hit.

Tomorrow night, she's supposed to take out a former parliamentarian, Alton Camden. Ivan had provided her with all the necessary information regarding timetables, security systems, surveillance, potential body guards, and routes. Upon reading Camden's file, it had become very clear to Villanelle that the key to getting to him would be hitting him below the belt; his wife had passed away only eight months ago, at age forty-five. She'd been extravagant, gorgeous and blonde - all the things Villanelle didn't even have to pretend to be, for she already was, and she was going to get him by using her natural charm - her most valuable asset. Killing him would be a walk in the park, clean and easy, perhaps in a blind-spot, or in a bar where she could slip something into his drink without being detected. Ivan had underlined the need to be subtle, and Villanelle's partially pleased with his request; she's as good as new, plus one ugly scar, but she'd rather not get too physical right now.

She checks into her hotel, the five star _Jumeirah Carlton Tower,_ and feels very pleased: from the balcony of her room on the sixth floor, she has a direct line of sight into the living room of Camden's townhouse on Sloane Street. She will spend her evening sitting on the balcony, sipping some red wine while keeping a close eye on what goes on inside his home. She will take it easy. She will trust her instincts, she will know that even though it's been almost eight weeks since her last mission, muscle memory doesn't fade, and once it's time to take Camden out, she'll know what to do, she'll know how to get herself high, like she's flying from the simple rush of seeing the light drain from his eyes. Everything will be normal again, and she'll get to go home afterwards.

There's a sudden pang in her stomach, quick and sharp, gone before she even feels the extent of it. Groaning, she goes back inside and lies down on the plush king-sized bed, spreads her hair out like a halo and her arms like angel wings.

_...I think about what you eat before you work..._

_Eve._

"Bitch", Villanelle hisses to herself, rubbing her eyes and smearing her brown eyeliner all over her cheeks. She doesn't know if she means Eve, or herself. "Bitch, bitch, bitch", because how the actual fuck is she back in London, she wonders now. When Ivan first had informed her of where she'd be going, she'd shrugged, faked confusion when he'd asked her about her feelings concerning the city she'd be working in, concerning the woman living there - the woman who had found her and had, ultimately, stabbed her.

Up until now, Villanelle had gone back and forth between scorching hot revenge and forcing herself to leave the whole matter alone. Safe to say, the former one followed her around like a shadow much more often than the latter, but the latter one was the one Ivan wanted to hear, and Villanelle really didn't want to end up on the Twelve's shit-list again, so she let him believe she was fine, that she trusted karma, that Eve would get what she deserved, one way or another, and not by Villanelle's own hand.

It cuts, to say the least. Once every hour, if not more often, Villanelle replays the whole scene in her head; her wrecked apartment, Eve's little confession about how much she thinks about Villanelle, Eve pretending to put her guard down, pretending to want to stay for a bit, Villanelle feeling the jolt of arousal, of success, of finally getting what she'd been coveting for weeks...and then the knife, the blazing hatred in Eve's eyes, the _pain._

She stops thinking about it the second her memory projects the knife entering her midsection. What had happened after doesn't matter. Eve's regret - her desperate attempt to _help_ Villanelle - doesn't matter. Eve had probably realized Villanelle wouldn't die from a single stab wound, so she'd tried to play nice, tried to fix her grand fuck-up, tried to save her own skin.

None of it matters. It had all been an act.

Eve deserves to suffer. Eve deserves to feel the pain she'd caused, to feel it a hundred times over, and Villanelle's body longs for it, longs for vengeance, setting their score even. No, she doesn't want it to be even. She wants Eve to be ninety-nine points _behind_ her. She wants Eve in _ruins,_ wants her begging and breathless, wants her to want to _die_ over what she'd done to Villanelle.

_...I think about what you're wearing and what you're doing and who you're doing it with..._

Villanelle knows where Eve works: Thames House, the MI5 Security Service headquarters...which is just half an hour away. Villanelle had checked before she'd flown out of Amsterdam.

_...I just want to know everything..._

The urge to destroy fills her lungs up like thick smoke, like it does every day, and she breathes slowly, staring at the chandelier above the bed, fingers twitching, a knot in her chest, fire in the pit of her stomach. She wonders if Eve looks the same, if what she'd done had somehow physically changed her appearance; a few worry lines here, a tightness in her shoulders there. She wonders if Eve's happy. She wonders if Eve still has sex with her possibly ex-husband, if she envisions Villanelle, like Villanelle had envisioned her before...before. And _after._

Even now, her twitching fingers move to her thigh, but she holds off, squeezes her eyes shut and curses herself for reacting the way she does. The ultimate revenge, making Eve endure agony - making her finally submit - would be like an earth-shattering orgasm that goes on and on for minutes on end, and she _aches_ for it, _yearns_ for both the mental and the physical satisfaction she'd feel from breaking Eve down to the very bone.

_...I know you're a psychopath..._

Villanelle has a plan: Actually, she has several plans - variations of the same plan - but because of this particular plan, there's a stash in her suitcase; a fake passport for Eve, as well as several credit cards under one of Villanelle's own aliases. During her recovery, Villanelle had cooked up a fantasy, a daydream where she'd break into Eve's house, get her out of the country and take her to a black site. There, with zero interruptions, she'd take her precious time, torturing Eve to no end in every possible way, making her feel _exactly_ what she'd done. Villanelle would grip that lovely dark mane of hers, twist it in her fist, watch as Eve's face would twist, too, watch as she'd plead on her knees, plead for forgiveness, plead to Villanelle, tell her that she'd do anything, anything, _anything._

Villanelle grins; she could make Eve do a lot of things. Villanelle would have the time of her fucking life making Eve do all sorts of things; she'd hold Eve's head underwater, drown her over and over, pull her out of the bath by her hair, push her back in, feel her body shaking and fighting, and Villanelle would cackle and howl, count "one Mississippi, two Mississippi", because that's what they do in the US, isn't it? She'd have such _fun._ Of course she'd love to kill Eve in a lot of different ways; strangle her, burn her, rip her limbs off one by one, fly her out into space, kick her out of the capsule, watch her body freeze and break into a million pieces. The possibilities in her mind are endless, but still, her fantasy of the black site had always prevailed, and so, she'd made the necessary arrangements, in case she one day felt like she wanted to go through with it.

_...are you here to kill me?..._

She knows she shouldn't do it. Too many things could go wrong with trying to leave the country with someone who's actually alive, so instead, she focuses her fantasies on being in Eve's house, or in some back alley, anywhere they can't be seen. Her mental images range from choking Eve so hard her face goes blue, and then, in a snap, they're not fighting, they're kissing instead, and Eve's pleading again, begging Villanelle to touch her, to fuck her, to take her, and _god,_ that fantasy still makes the blood in Villanelle's veins feel like fire-- _no._

It wouldn't be like that. It wouldn't go like that, not after the decision Eve had made, for it had been a _decision:_ Villanelle's intentions had been clear - she'd _made_ them clear - and Eve had chosen. That moment had come and gone, had become something completely different from what Villanelle had wanted, so she goes back to the strangulation, the feel of smooth skin and tough joints giving in under her strong fingers, cutting off Eve's oxygen supply, breaking her windpipe, crushing her cervical vertebrae, and yet--

\--it's not enough.

Nothing she'd imagined during the past months had been enough, not even close.

_...just tell me what you want..._

She wants to see Eve, just... _see_ her, to begin with. She shouldn't want that, but naturally, she does. She's in London. She just wants to see what Eve looks like.

She shouldn't, though.

She should stay in her 500 pounds-a-night room, she should take a bath, she should keep an eye on Camden, but for some reason, her hands dig a baseball cap out of her suitcase, her feet take her to the bathroom and out of it, and then she's in the hotel lobby, out on the street, on the bus to West Norwood, hopping off at Stanford Street, walking down Vincent Square and Horseferry Road, and suddenly, the spectacular facade of Thames House is right in front of her nose, and her heart actually stops; something it almost never does.

How useless, trying to keep herself in check. No matter what she'd told Ivan, she'd known she would end up right here.

She stays completely still, staring at the building: the building Eve's probably in. She'd be sitting at a desk, working her stupid job - her third job, since she'd held Villanelle responsible for the loss of two, and then some.

She's being stupid. She's completely exposed where she stands, but when she looks over her shoulder, she realizes there's a Burberry store a street away, right opposite of the entrance to Thames House. Pleased that the baseball cap on her head is the only non-polished thing she's wearing, she enters the store and greets the guard at the door. He throws one glance at her expensive designer clothing and welcomes her in with a polite smile. Once inside, she pretends to carefully look over the selection of logo suitcases while actually looking past them, out through the window, towards the security gate in front of the Thames House entrance.

Some unknown force must've called out to her, emphasizing with her need for revenge, because after only twelve minutes, a familiar looking woman in dreary clothes exits the MI5 headquarters, phone squeezed in between her ear and her shoulder, unruly hair tied into a sloppy bun, face animated. Villanelle burns on the inside: she hasn't seen Eve in almost two months, and now, she feels her own breathing getting heavier, feels her fingers itching, feels them wanting to reach for the knife she's hidden in her Bulgari jacket pocket...but if she wants to keep her eyes on Eve, she has to move. Now. Without giving the sales personnel another glance, she hurries out the door, practically running in the direction Eve had gone.

Villanelle sees the back of Eve's head a good twenty, twenty-five feet away down the street. After trailing her for a few minutes, Villanelle realizes Eve's taking the worst goddamn sightseeing route there is; Villanelle elbows her way through the masses, follows Eve down Whitehill, past Big Ben, 10 Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, into the area of the busy and posh Covent Garden. There, Eve comes to a stop in front of Nando's of all places, looking like she's swearing at her phone, and Villanelle's out of breath, head spinning because she _finally_ has a chance to get a proper look at Eve from just a short distance away, and what she sees hits her like a whole new stab in the gut: Eve looks annoyed, but beautiful. She doesn't look like a demon, doesn't look like the monster in disguise which Villanelle had made herself believe Eve was, after what she'd been capable of doing. She looks exasperated and focused, precisely like she'd looked when she'd been hunting Villanelle down - and it _stings._

Eve's poking the screen of her phone with her index finger, jabbing it and stomping her right foot on the pavement. Maybe her battery had run out, or maybe the reception's bad. Whatever it is, her frustration makes her look delightful, ferocious, and before Villanelle knows what's happening, she's approaching Eve, quickly and steadily, side-stepping the current of people moving in her direction, getting in her way, and Eve's just ten feet from her now, nine, eight, seven--

Villanelle bumps into Eve's shoulder from behind, gets a hit of the scent she recognizes, the scent she'd smelt in her Parisian apartment, on the bed with Eve next to her, and in a split second, her head's filled with an image reel: Eve lying on her side, Villanelle's fingers in her dark hair, on her warm cheek, Eve's dark eyes flickering between Villanelle's own eyes and lips, Villanelle leaning in--

The moment's over, Villanelle's trotting down the sidewalk, but the place where her clothed arm had grazed Eve's shoulder feels like it's been burnt, like it's been placed too close to a furnace, and she doesn't dare stop until two corners away, where she turns onto Bedfordbury, in the direction they'd come from. There, she steps to the side, leans her back against some shopping window, people coming and going before her eyes, and her heart's hammering like she's had a fright, like Eve's body had forced a real physical reaction, adrenaline pumping through her veins, telling her to either fight or run, and it's so _annoying._

Villanelle stays on the sidewalk for a long time, feeling like a train speeding in a circle, through a tunnel of emotions; excitement, anger, rage, hunger, sorrow, one after the other, flushing over her, on and on, like a broken record jumping back and forth. The whole experience, the split second of it, tastes like ash in her mouth, sounds like a faraway melody, dark and sad, played on a broken piano, making her ears bleed, drowning out the sound of people's footsteps, cabs honking, cars screeching. If she'd had her way, she wouldn't have just bumped into Eve; she would have grabbed Eve's arm, slammed her into the wall, choked her with the length of her forearm, stared deep into her eyes, sucking up her numbing fear like pure oxygen, whispering, _"did you really think you'd get away with it? Did you really think I'd let you do something like that to me, Eve?"_

Eve's not going to get away with it. Villanelle lifts a shaking hand to her hot forehead, waits for the knot in her chest to loosen itself, waits for her mouth to taste normal again, waits for the echoing piano to die out, and then, she heads back to the _Jumeirah._

 

* * *

 

Villanelle takes a long bath, back steadily supported against the edge of the claw foot porcelain tub, hair tied back, empty gaze staring at the opposite tile wall. Her pulse is slow, matching her breathing. She's calm now, but it had taken a while. It had taken _hours._

She lifts one of her arms out of the water, drapes it over the edge of the tub, wet drops like pearls running down the porcelain, onto the floor. Despite her slow heartbeat, her chest still feels tight, and she doubts it will stop feeling that way anytime soon, until something concrete happens, until she disregards Ivan's rules and does something real to get closer to the revenge she deserves.

_...you're an asshole, Oksana..._

Reaching up with both arms now, Villanelle unties her hair, feels it slide down her neck, her shoulders, the tops of her strands sinking into the warm water, and she follows their path, bends her knees up so that she can slide down beneath the surface, burying her body at the bottom of the porcelain tub. She's a good swimmer; she has to be. She can hold her breath for several minutes. The tub is hard against the back of her head, her honey hair floating freely, and she keeps her eyes tightly shut, listens to the vibrating silence surrounding her, listens to the steady beat of her own pulse. In the water, the fingers of her right hand find her scar, two pads tracing it, and it's rough, like a split, a scrape on a mirror, and while her own touch doesn't hurt, _Eve_ does, everywhere, all the time, and she releases her breath, breaks the surface, gasps loudly, grips the edges of the tub with both hands.

The sound of water running from her hair is almost deafening, too loud, while logic tells her it barely sounds like anything at all, just soft rain, but everything is too much, everything about London is just too much, and she can't be here, but she must. She has to. She has to, she has to--

_...I think about you all the time..._

She has to talk to Eve, and she dips back down beneath the surface to scream until her lungs are empty.

Villanelle has no idea who she is anymore; this woman, this desperately hung up and wounded woman has no place in her life, in her body. She's not going to be one of those people, the people that hold onto one single moment in time and evolve their whole life around it, their future and their past, but goddammit, Eve is everywhere, engulfing her like the water she's sitting in, filling her senses, touching her everywhere, and it hurts. It won't stop, it will never stop until, until--

\--until Villanelle _makes_ it stop.

There's only one way to do that, to make it stop for sure.

There's a 9mm Pistolet Makarova in her suitcase. Screw black sites and waterboarding; she could end this, end her own pain with a single squeeze of her right index finger, but whom should she aim the gun at? Herself, or the cause of her distress? If Eve dies, it'll all be very well, but the memory of her won't necessarily die with her, and Villanelle doesn't know if she can go on with this, feeling this way, feeling so cheated and used. But then again, like she'd already decided, Villanelle is not going to be one of those people who get obsessed with that one thing, and so, it's evidently clear _who_ should get a bullet in the back of her head. Whatever happens after that, Villanelle will deal with it. She'd dealt with the death of her father, dealt with Anna Leonova's betrayal, dealt with the women's penitentiary in Russia, and she'll fucking well deal with the aftermath of Eve Polastri's death.

 

* * *

 

Finchley, as a residential area, is rather boring, Villanelle thinks as she climbs the fence and jumps over it, landing in the darkness of Eve's garden. The weather is windy and wet, a complete contrast of what it'd been several hours earlier, and Villanelle longs for a warm bed, longs to be back in the bath, but hell, she has something to attend to. She's here now, and there's no going back until she's got what she'd come for. What that is, she currently isn't entirely sure of, because like always, her mind had changed ten times during the tube ride to Finchley.

Crouching on the ground, behind rose bushes and fruit trees, she squints. From where she's hiding, she can see into what she knows is Eve's home office to the left of the back door. The blinds in the kitchen window are down but not shut, and moving carefully, she positions herself so that she has a direct line of sight into the kitchen, and there's Eve's husband, the mustache man. Villanelle bites the inside of her cheek, feeling a familiar sting in her chest. Apparently, Eve's whole speech about losing two jobs and a husband had been complete and utter bullshit...or at least the husband-part had been, for there he is, looking very homey. Villanelle could point her gun and blow his brains out, right through the kitchen window. She imagines the sound of the gun going off like a loud drum, the glass breaking, his body thumping against the stove, Eve screaming. The thought is exciting, tastes delicious in her mouth, but it's not what she's going to do. She's going to wait until she has her eyes on Eve, and Eve _only._

This time, she waits for a long time, way more than twelve minutes. The wind is cold, her quads aching from sitting in an uncomfortable squat for what feels like forever, but eventually, the back door opens and Eve steps outside, body wrapped in something that looks like a long knitted cardigan. Her hair is still tied back, but she looks a lot more carefree, a lot more relaxed than she'd looked earlier. It must be because of the husband. Villanelle purses her lips, her hand sneaking into the back of her jeans, her fingers closing around her gun.

Eve's rummaging through a steel box, clearly looking for something, and Villanelle squints more, focuses on Eve's hands, and then there's a black lantern in Eve's left hand, and then another. She places them down on the porch and squats down, unknowingly mirroring Villanelle's exact position. Eve dips her right hand into the pocket of her cardigan and pulls out a small box. Matches, Villanelle realizes. The warm light from the house makes Eve glow, makes every detail stand out, and when she strikes a match, her whole face lights up, soft and lovely, but then, the match goes out before it reaches the inside of the lantern, and Villanelle hears Eve mutter something in frustration.

Villanelle changes her stance so that she's got her left knee on the ground and the right one in the air, directly above her right foot, and she supports her gun arm on her right knee, makes her body hard as a sculpture, stays completely still in the roaring wind, aims the Makarov at Eve's chest, and then, she waits.

After a while, it comes. Her nerves give up, stop licking her skin, and her body's overcome by a smooth, quiet calm, a type of serenity, a focus so sharp nothing could tilt it. Her pulse beats steadily when she sees the barrel of her gun pointed right at Eve's heart, and oh, she's flying, endorphins filling her head, making her feel ecstatic. She knows now, she could do it, precisely like she'd known she could kill Anna, if she'd had to, if Anna hadn't done it herself. She knows now, Eve isn't special in any way except for the way in which Villanelle could kill her, but doesn't want to - not right now. Villanelle had needed to know her own strength, had needed to know she could have her revenge at any given time, and now she has that knowledge, and she doesn't need to do anything else tonight.

She's so pumped up from her revelation, she doesn't even realize Eve's stopped moving. She's scanning her surroundings, forehead in a frown, and then, "I know you're there."

The sound of her voice makes Villanelle tense up, and she quickly lowers her gun, puts her hand very close to the ground so that she won't accidentally pull the trigger. Her breathing stops altogether, but then returns, because she knows Eve can't see her. The garden is too shadowed, and she's too well hidden by scratchy bushes and trees; she can still see Eve, though, and her face is a mixture of fear, confusion and...relief? Villanelle raises her eyebrows in the dark; of all the emotions she'd expected to see on Eve's face, relief certainly wasn't one of them. But how would Eve know it's her? Had she seen her earlier, in Covent Garden, had she--

\--no. It's _La Villanelle,_ carried by the wind. It has to be. Villanelle had sprayed some of it on after her bath; a stupid mistake...but maybe that's alright, because now Eve knows for sure that Villanelle's alive, and oh, how she must be frightened.

"Why are you here?" Eve asks, voice a little louder, and there's a tremble there, Villanelle realizes, and smirks. Eve is afraid, rightfully so. _"Why are you here?"_ God, what a stupid question. It's obvious why she's here, but maybe Eve, like Villanelle too, has imagined several different outcomes in the case of Villanelle being alive, returning, finding her, _catching_ her. If Eve only knew which things Villanelle had imagined doing to her, still imagines, right now: Villanelle could creep out of the shadows, quick as a lion chasing a zebra in the desert, and she'd hook her fangs into Eve's neck, rip her cardigan to pieces, dig her nails into her hips and her thighs and her throat, destroy her violently, ravish her in her own backyard, with her husband still inside the house. Villanelle could do many, many things. Villanelle could kill her, but she doesn't want to. She wants something else. She wants the crucial element, the fear, and Eve giving into that fear: She wants _supplication._

Villanelle's going to play a game. Games are _fun._ She draws a fast breath, and then she says, loud and clear, "To make your life _interesting_ again."

Eve's eyes widen in the dim light, her body jumps at the sound of Villanelle's steady voice, and she looks around in panic, a deer in the headlights, searching, seeking, but finding nothing. Villanelle grins from ear to ear, on the verge of bursting out into victorious laughter. This is going to be so much more fun than killing Eve, more fun than watching the light disappear from her eyes. This is going to be hilarious, Villanelle thinks, envisioning all the ways she could make Eve tremble, make her flinch, make her climb the walls out of pure nerves. Oh, this is going to be _biblical._

Several quiet minutes later, Eve bends down to light the lanterns, protecting the matches by turning her back to the wind, to Villanelle, and when the lanterns are lit, she places them on either side of the porch and heads back inside, closing the door and locking it. Villanelle hears the click; a familiar sound, since she'd broken in through that door only a few months ago. When Eve's completely out of sight, her shadow gone, Villanelle reaches into her pocket, pulls out a mini-grip bag containing Eve's fake passport and the credit cards, digs a hole underneath a fruit tree to her left, buries the bag, and then, she fills the hole with soil and dirt. Old tricks work well, and as things are now, Eve might need her fake passport after all. As things are now, Villanelle could very well knock her out one evening, throw her into a van, drug her, drive her through the Eurotunnel and bullshit the border control that Eve's just had a few drinks too many, then take her to France, maybe to the _parc naturel régional_ outside of Calais, make her Villanelle's own personal plaything, then make her disappear for good.

The thought feels hot in her gut, but getting any release will have to wait. Alton Camden's still breathing; she'd run off track for a few hours, but now she's back, and she has a job to do.


	2. Tightrope

"You did very good."

Villanelle puts on her smug smile as she glances at Ivan - her handler since two months back - and stops to perform a rather articulate bow. "Of course I did." She'd done better than very good: dressed up as a perky temp-waitress, she'd slipped a small vial of botulinum into Alton Camden's drink at The Star Tavern, the pub closest to his home; the pub she'd known he spent a lot of time at. At first sight, he'd spasmed like he'd been having a heart attack, and by the time the paramedics had arrived, Villanelle was long gone. Ergo, she'd done exceptionally well.

Ivan looks at her skeptically while his fingers trace the stitching on an Armani suit. He's a man of wealth, a man who knows how to dress in a manner that catches any woman's eye, so instead of having their standard feedback conversation at Villanelle's new loft apartment on Keizersgracht, they're at De Bijenkorf, Amsterdam's luxury department store. "How do you feel about an assessment?"

Villanelle had already gone through a new assessment five weeks ago. "I feel it's unnecessary." She shakes her head at the Armani suits, steers Ivan further, towards the Tom Ford-section. "Why do you need a new suit? You have hundreds. You're like that big judge on Masterchef Australia. He always wears a different suit."

"And a different handkerchief", Ivan adds, raising his dark eyebrows at her. "You of all people should know the meaning of style, Villanelle. That's what you spend your money on."

She has to agree with him; she likes her clothes to be designer, to be more expensive than what most people could afford to buy, but while the creator of her garment holds significant weight, she prefers her clothes to be without visible labels: a t-shirt screaming "Moschino" would be a cry for attention, and for Villanelle, what matters is her ability to slip into a crowd and know that in that particular crowd, she's  _iconic._  "We're on the wrong floor." The women's clothing is on the third one, one floor up.

"You can shop on your own time", Ivan mumbles as he inspects some Tom Ford cuff links. "How did you feel in London?"

His question stops Villanelle's outstretched fingers, which had been reaching for a navy tie on one of the mannequin models. "Irritated." An understatement. "Hm, bored. Super pissed off." There'd been other feelings too, a whole abundance of emotions, but they're not for Ivan's ears, so she changes the subject, while wondering what Eve Polastri's up to. "Is there a special occasion coming, or do you just want to add to your already gigantic wardrobe?"

Ivan shrugs his shoulders and moves on to look at some shirts. "Any harmful thoughts?"

Apparently, he's not letting it go. "Several, but what did you expect? I was stabbed." She says it like the newspapers prefer to write headlines about crimes:  _man brutally assaulted in bar, woman allegedly raped, pensioners scammed;_  an abstract form, down-playing the responsibility of the one who'd committed the crime.  _Eve._  Villanelle wonders if Eve's looking over her shoulder, if she'd told anyone, if she's sleeping at all, if her appetite's gone, if her stomach's churning like a dryer, if she'd written her will yet. Villanelle's scar throbs. The mind-body-connection is an interesting thing.

"You should find something to take your mind off it", Ivan says as he steers them out of De Bijenkorf - without buying a new suit. "We'll be very careful. Your new apartment won't be as easily compromised as the one in Paris, so as long as you watch your back, you should try to make a friend or two."

Villanelle chuckles lowly as they cross the street and enter the Dam square, working their way through flocks of tourists. It's a bright and sunny day in Amsterdam, with summer just around the corner. "Yep, because that worked out really well for me last time."

"Eve Polastri wasn't your friend." They stop in front of a kiosk, and Ivan orders two hot dogs. "Next time, find a woman who doesn't want to kill you. Okay?"

Villanelle snatches one of the hot dogs out of his hand and proceeds to fill it with roast onion, mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise. She takes a huge bite, covering her upper lip in the different sauces, doesn't bother with an answer because right now, the only woman she's interested in is the one who'd tried to kill her, and that's not what Ivan wants to hear. He doesn't want to hear about Villanelle's various gory fantasies, about the thoughts which keep her up at night, make her toss and turn, make the bags under her eyes visible through her expensive concealer, make her heart pound loudly even when she's skipping her caffeine. Ivan needs her to be fine, and she  _is_  fine, but she's also very, very vengeful - he just doesn't know her well enough to understand that, yet. He should, though; to be her handler, he must have read her file, and therefore, should know what she'd done to the men who'd murdered her father.

"Oh, this is really yum", he mumbles around his hot dog. He squints at it in the bright sunlight, examining the texture of the sausage. "It's so much better than at home."

Villanelle doesn't ask where his home is; if he's from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary or Slovakia. She doesn't ask if he has a family, or what sort of food he usually eats. She won't make the same mistake twice. 

 

* * *

 

Some days later, Villanelle's lying in her bed on the mezzanine, city lights throwing shadows across her face, MacBook open in her lap, her google search showing results for "Nikolas Polastri". According to the news section on the  _Bridge Club_  website - the same website where Villanelle had first realized  _who_  Eve Polastri actually was - all Bridge tutors will be attending a fair in Bristol, from the 25th to the 27th. Three days, two nights, no husband to interrupt them. Anticipation flickers in Villanelle's stomach, makes her breath hitch, splits her face into a huge grin. She'd be going to London anyway in about four weeks, but it's too far away: seeing Eve in the flesh - hearing her voice - had cracked the invisible restraints inside of Villanelle, and now, there's nothing holding her back; all she can think about is going back to Finchley, all she wants is to see the terror in Eve's eyes up close, preferably the same terror she'd witnessed the night she'd shoved Eve up against the fridge, a knife to her chest.

_...I think about your eyes and your mouth and what you feel when you kill someone..._

Oh, she'll push it through slowly, this time, if it comes to that, if Eve fights her. She'll push it through Eve's breastbone with such ease, such gentleness. Maybe she'll slip her fingers inside of her at the same time; that would most certainly have Eve  _screaming,_  but not in that high-pitched, screeching bathroom-voice which Villanelle hates. No, these screams would be breathier, sort of rustling, bordering on moans. It's fun to fantasize about all the things Villanelle could do during the upcoming weekend, but before she settles in properly, before she constructs the absolute cornerstones of her fantasy - the fantasy which  _will_  become reality in a few days - she closes the Nikolas Polastri tab, opens KLM's website, books herself a flight, and hopes that Ivan's not keeping tabs on her.

 

* * *

 

The Friday before Villanelle leaves for London, she spends her afternoon strolling around in The Nine Streets canal-district in Amsterdam. It's a wonderful part of the city: there are vintage and designer boutiques at every corner, balconies overflowing with flowers, cute little cafes, stylish the-place-to-be restaurants. She has no plans to fulfill Ivan's wish: she's not going to make any friends here. On her days off, she explores the different central areas of Amsterdam: De Wallen, which she really likes for rather obvious reasons, Vondelpark, De Pijp, Frederik Hendrikbuurt, and today, Jordaan. She's just visited the lovely little fashion shop Scotch & Soda, where she'd bought herself a black-and-white splashed top, and now, she's on a look-out for a suitable place to stop for a smoothie or a snack.

Not ten minutes later, she finds a comfortable looking cafe called Doffer. Its interior is very much like that of an old Wild Wild West-pub, a long bar with wooden stools, and the place is only half-full, so it suits her needs. Off the menu, she orders a strawberry and banana smoothie together with salmon and avocado on rye, and when she takes her seat at a table in the back, she notices a man eyeing her from the bar.

It's a strange sensation. Eyes on her are no news whatsoever, and she knows she looks chic, but the way this man - dark, tall, athletic, handsome - keeps glancing at her is very bold, even for Villanelle's tastes. A familiar warmth settles in her stomach, her predatory mode flicking itself on, and the next time the man's eyes land on her, she gives him an inquiring look. He scoffs, looks down at his beer bottle, then pushes his stool back and walks over.

"That's a cool jacket", he declares in a British accent, but he doesn't sit down. He's referring to Villanelle's Martine Rose Beer Mat Bomber Jacket, which is a mixture of fabrics in orange, black, mint and moss, with several lines of white text on the sleeves, the front lining, above the hem. It's a very nice jacket, bought in Frankfurt, but Amsterdam has very nice things, too: the top she'd bought today, several beautiful pieces of clothing she'd seen in shopping windows, several beautiful pieces that would look magnificent on Eve--

"Thank you", Villanelle says, to cut off her own improper train of thought, not remembering to hide her Russian accent. The man must be twenty-six, twenty-seven, perhaps a student, if the books peeking out of his backpack are any indication. She doesn't know if she's in any mood for company, but still, she says, "Please, sit down, since you already walked all the way over here. Or was it just to compliment my jacket?"

He shakes his head, and sits down in a haste. It's more sweet than weird how nervous he is, how his gaze keeps lingering on the different parts of Villanelle. "I'm sorry to disturb you, I just--I, um, I liked your look. And, apparently, in this city, it's perfectly alright to speak to strangers, so I thought, well. I don't know what I thought. You looked, uh, interesting."

Daring, but insecure. Villanelle leans back in her chair, studying him intently. His dark hair is thick, looks like it would feel soft. His skin's a little darker, tanned. Brown eyes, sharp nose, short stubble. He looks like a thousand men before him, and if Villanelle passed him in the street, she wouldn't even look twice, but now, she's tense and hungry, a string pulled tight with what she knows is coming tomorrow, and she hasn't had sex in months, hasn't been touched by anyone but herself, and he  _does_  look rather good, and maybe this wouldn't be the worst idea, maybe she could use a little warm up before London...

When Villanelle doesn't comment, he clears his throat and mumbles, "I'm Adam, by the way."

No, it's a bad idea. Villanelle fails to stifle the sarcastic chuckle that escapes her, because  _of course_  his name is Adam, and of course she wants his  _wife,_  created by God, taken from Adam's rib. Eve Polastri, though, isn't taken from _anyone's_ rib. Eve is nothing like the one in the Book of Genesis, but still, the two syllables of Adam's name taste like a bitter joke made by the universe. She digs out her wallet, places twenty euros on the table to pay for the food she hadn't even received yet, gets up and grabs her shopping bag. "Sorry, Adam", she says as she zips up her jacket, "thank you, but not today."

 

* * *

 

When Villanelle gets back from The Nine Steets district, she throws both her shopping bag and her very nice jacket onto her leather couch underneath the mezzanine, and then, she hurries up the stairs, to the bed where her MacBook's currently hiding underneath the sheets. It starts powering up while she steps out of her pumps and strips out of her slacks and t-shirt, and when she's finally in nothing but her underwear, she builds a backrest out of her pillows, and gets into bed. On her laptop, there's a folder containing various audio files, one of which is the recording from Eve's hotel room in Berlin. Villanelle had saved it, but after killing Eve's partner, she'd never replayed it - until now. She feels a compelling need, an urge to listen to Eve's voice being light and normal, for then she can imagine how her voice will change, how it will get all raspy and frightened when Villanelle pushes a knife, or the barrel of a gun, or a shard of glass against Eve's slender neck.

She rests her laptop on her stomach, hiding her scar, and presses play.

Back in the day, she'd edited the recording, so it starts with the sound of a door opening and closing: Eve getting back from her shopping trip. Villanelle breathes out slowly, closes her eyes, focuses on the sounds on the tape; shoes clonking, bags rustling, a deep sigh, incoherent mumbling, the sound of clothes being taken off. Villanelle bites her lower lip, imagines Eve stripping out of her boring clothes, revealing more skin, inch by inch. Another door opens and closes - the bathroom - and Villanelle distinguishes the faint sound of a toilet being flushed, and then the stream of a shower. Does Eve's skin become smoother when it's wet, or would touching it be like running your finger over a plastic slide; jagged, making the journey of Villanelle's hands stop several times? She doesn't know, hadn't touched her enough to know, that time she'd helped Eve out of her wet dress, but Villanelle gets lost in the imagery of it, and then, Eve's getting dressed and calling her husband on her computer.

_"Oh, hey, hi, darling..."_

Villanelle rolls her eyes. In another life, Anna Leonova had called her "darling" - to her face, in bed, all the time. She pushes that memory to the back of her mind, focuses on dissecting the breathlessness in Eve's voice, the familiarity she shares with her husband. Not in a million years would Eve call Villanelle "darling"...and Villanelle doesn't want her to. Villanelle had imagined using it before things had gone very, very South, but she doubts Eve would ever have used such a term with  _her._

 _"Oh my god, why didn't you remind me?"_  Eve's snapping at her husband, making the corners of Villanelle's mouth turn upwards. Oh, she sounds so feisty when she's annoyed.

_"Oh, a dress, ah, I didn't have the right clothes for tonight."_

This time, Villanelle doesn't just smile: she snickers, remembering stealing Eve's suitcase from right under her nose, then dressing a woman named Pamela up in Eve's clothes, devouring her for a whole hour while imagining Eve in Pamela's place. Still, Pamela herself had been a really nice way to kill time; she hadn't asked many questions, had played along without having any clue what the name of the game was, had let Villanelle do anything without objections. She'd been so pliant, so astounded to be having sex with a woman so much younger; to be desired by a woman so much younger. She'd responded to a name that wasn't hers, never minding that Villanelle openly fantasized about someone else. Maybe Pamela had her own fantasy: someone young, fit and blonde, someone she wanted to want her, but that someone was in a completely different galaxy, as far away as Villanelle had wished Eve to be, after the knife had entered her stomach.

_"You'll look gorgeous."_

_"Yeah, I doubt that."_

Villanelle had seen Eve that night, at the U-Bahn. She'd looked more than gorgeous, but the doubt in her voice makes Villanelle momentarily pity her; she must not have any idea how alluring she can be, how she can creep into Villanelle's mind, get under her skin, plague her thoughts for days on end...which is good, because Villanelle doesn't want her to know. She wants Eve to see the hate, the menace, the cruelty,  _not_  the hurt. Suddenly, she realizes her right hand has travelled away from the keyboard, to the top of her right thigh, and quickly, she places it back around the edge of the laptop.

_"Is that Bill?"_

Aw, the jealousy, the slight pause in the husband's voice, and then Eve's voice, stalling a little before she answers. _Misplaced_ jealousy, Villanelle knows, and had known then, too, because of the dialogue between Eve and her colleague Bill, their questions whether or not one had ever fancied the other. Still, it's entertaining, makes her bite her lower lip and grin, even more so when she remembers the look on the man's face when he'd realized he'd been led straight into a trap, and then, the sound of his painful groan as she'd stabbed him to death, the elation she'd felt, the high--

No. She should focus on Eve, whose laughter is throaty and deep, lovely, amused by Bill's confession about sometimes sleeping with his wife. Villanelle shifts on the bed, and once again, her right hand leaves the laptop and starts travelling down her body. The laptop's starting to feel warm on her stomach, or is  _she_  warm? Bill asks Eve if she's ever been interested in women, and her response is short, a non-committal sound, suggesting it's not important whom she has or hasn't been interested in. Still, Bill pushes, and then comes Villanelle's favourite part: Bill describes someone who  _must_  be Villanelle, voice suggestive and teasing, and Eve's reaction is priceless; she fakes offence, then asks if Bill wants to  _"hear about her tits",_  and Villanelle's face splits into a shit-eating grin as her hand slips under the waistband of her underwear, and Eve's voice has got her obscenely aroused, so wet her fingers find no resistance at all, and with her free hand, she slaps the laptop shut, pushes it to the side. She's heard enough. 

It's not the first time she does this. Her confession had been true; she'd masturbated about Eve a lot, and as her mind projects a series of made up scenarios and images about Eve, visions she'd seen many times before but also new ones, violent and bloody ones, she realizes that going through with it - bringing herself all the way to the edge and then giving into the waves of her orgasm - would be like eating a whole cake without having permission, like snagging the prize before she wins it deservedly. Reluctantly, she pulls her hand out of her underwear, forces herself to get out of bed, and then, she tiptoes down the stairs and enters the bathroom. In there, she turns the tap until the shower becomes freezing cold, but no matter how long she stands underneath the icy stream, the pulsation between her legs won't cease. Luckily, there's comfort in knowing that tomorrow night, it will: when she sees Eve's pupils dilate, sees her give up and fall to her knees, hears her wail in fear and agony, hears her plead for forgiveness, it  _will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: the chapters that follow will include parts which might be interpreted as dub!con, although they aren't meant to be, and if you've read "The Void" from Eve's perspective, you'll know they aren't. Just a tiny heads-up. Thank you for reading and keeping up with this series!


	3. Lost Gravity

On Saturday the 26th, Villanelle's back in England; specifically, back at Eve's house in Finchley. Fiddling with the porch door lock is as easy as it had been that first time, and soundlessly, she steps inside, and gently shuts the door behind her. She'd spent a good twenty minutes walking back and forth on the street on which Eve's house is located, to check that one, Eve was home, and two, she was all alone.

The child inside of Villanelle giggles at the thought of sneaking up on Eve, leaning in, whispering "Boo!" and watching Eve fly ten feet into the air, but as fun as that might be, Villanelle's in no mood for jump scares; she's too wired, too impatient, and the whole house smells exactly like it'd done the last time: some unfortunate cologne, spicy aromas, plants, and Eve, who's currently reclining on the sofa with a glass of wine in her hand, hair open, wearing a long-sleeved top and sweats, television on. Villanelle hangs silently in the little nook that separates the kitchen and living room from the back home office and the washer and the dryer, watching Eve from behind, running her eyes over her slender form, and Villanelle's heart squeezes painfully. Once upon a time, she'd thought it lovely, the idea of the two of them like this: _normal._ Alas, it'd just been a fantasy; one that won't come true. She hasn't thought about that particular fantasy in a long time now, not since Eve had asked, _"What do you want?"_ and Villanelle had replied, honestly, _"Someone to watch movies with."_

They won't be watching any movies, that much is certain, but other fantasies could become reality, tonight: in her mind's eye, Villanelle sees herself breaking Eve's limbs, snapping her delicate bones, causing her intolerable levels of agony, so much pain she should by all means pass out, and that'll be all she's allowed to do: she won't get to die, no matter how much she might want to. Villanelle's going to let her heal nicely, and then, she'll be back to cause some more damage. She might throw one or two open-mouthed kisses in there as well; absorbing Eve's screams, feeling them move from her throat into Villanelle's mouth, would be invigorating. Maybe Villanelle will press a tender, loving kiss to Eve's brow, then shatter her radius. Leaving room to maneuver within the fantasy is important, so Villanelle has a set of things she wants to do, but in which order she does them will be completely up to how Eve plays along.

If Villanelle's memory serves her right - and it usually does - the kitchen floor won't creak if she walks forward, closer to Eve, so she takes a few tentative steps, both exhilarated and annoyed by the loud beating of her own heart. She's going to creep up to Eve, and place her fingers around her beautiful throat. Villanelle's right hand is behind her back, fingers wrapped around the handle of her Makarov pistol, ready to pull it out the second Eve senses her presence, and Villanelle makes it past the kitchen island, past the table, all the way up to the couch where Eve's resting, so close she can smell her hair, and the television's so loud, and Villanelle pulls her gun out of the waistband of her jeans, and--

\--Eve inhales sharply, then turns her head.

The moment feels like it's stretching out: Villanelle's gun hand freezes, as does her body, and Eve sits completely still, staring, eyes wide and lips parted in surprise, and then, as if someone releases their bodies from an invisible grasp, Eve drops her glass, shuffles away from Villanelle, whose muscles suddenly start working again, and she straightens her arm, pointing the Makarov right at Eve's head.

"No, no, no", Eve gasps, raising one of her hands and placing the other one against her chest like she'd done on that sandy road in Bletcham, so long ago, but this time, Villanelle doesn't hesitate. She inhales slowly, steadies her hand, chest swelling at the sound of Eve's frightened pleas: they're _magnificent._ "Wait, just--just wait, okay? I want to talk to you, I want--"

"How about _I_ do the talking this time?" Villanelle hisses, eyes raking over Eve's tense form. She feels lightheaded and dizzy, overcome by a wave of physical pleasure when Eve wraps her body up into a tiny ball, pushing herself into the back of the sofa. Villanelle's smile is sinister as she asks, "Did you think I wouldn't come?"

"I knew you'd come", Eve gasps, and her dark eyes are full of dread, exactly like Villanelle had envisioned. "I knew it was you, two weeks ago, I knew, and I know you won't believe me, and--and I know you have this whole idea of what you _think_ I did to you, but I didn't want to do that--I mean, I _did,_ but as soon as I did, I realized I didn't _want_ to, and--"

The physical pleasure subsides, making room for agitation, and Villanelle scrunches her face up. She doesn't want to hear any of Eve's pathetic excuses. "Okay, I can't concentrate when you're babbling. Be quiet, please."

"No, no, listen!" Eve lowers her arms, making Villanelle squeeze the handle of the gun harder. "Listen to me, okay? When I knew you were outside, I felt--I felt relieved, okay? You have no idea how horrible I've felt, thinking you were--that I'd...Look, you don't know. You really, really don't--"

"BE QUIET!" Villanelle screams as hard as she can, taken aback by the sheer volume of her own voice, by the way Eve flinches on the couch, lowers her head in between her shoulders, like she's trying to hide. "You _tricked_ me", she spits, and fuck, how it hurts to say it out loud.

Eve shakes her head, eyes on the floor, on Villanelle's combat boots. "Bill--"

"I knooow", Villanelle groans, because she gets it - she'd always got it - she just doesn't care. "I killed your precious little friend, yeah, yeah, I know. I know you think we're even-steven now, Eve, but we're not." She pushes the barrel of the gun against the side of Eve's head, just above her ear, and locks her fingers around Eve's throat, forcing her off the couch, dragging her into the middle of the floor, onto a moss coloured carpet, squeezing her throat so hard it has to be difficult to breathe, and it feels _amazing:_ with Eve on her knees on the floor, gasping and fighting, Villanelle bends her upper body so that their eyes are on the same level. Eve's fingernails are digging into Villanelle's wrist, but she compartmentalizes the pain, puts it in a box, makes herself oblivious to it, oblivious to everything other than the adrenaline flowing through her, giving her the strength of a hundred soldiers. "See, I think you forgot one little important detail", Villanelle continues, voice low. "You got your revenge, but who said I wasn't going to get mine?"

Eve's eyes widen even more, bottom lip trembling, hands uselessly scratching at the one strangling her.

Villanelle hums, sticks her tongue into her cheek. "Hm. You see, Eve, I'm not even mad at you." She smiles widely, and Eve tries to wriggle backwards, but fails. "I'm very many things right now, but mad? No. I understand revenge, believe me, and you? Well, you _impressed_ me. So to be perfectly honest, I'm mad at myself, which I hate, and you know what I do when I'm mad at myself? Can you guess?" She searches Eve's face, looking for an answer, but Eve's eyes don't speak of anything other than the fear of the death she must think is coming. Villanelle leans in really close to her, whispers, "I break things, Eve."

"And you're going to break me", Eve chokes out, closing her eyes.

"Yes", Villanelle laughs. Her eyes travel over Eve and land on her hands: fingers first, then. Disarm her, make sure she can't cause any more damage with her nails. There's probably a pair of scissors somewhere in the kitchen; if Villanelle puts her back into it, they'll be enough to sever the tendons in Eve's fingers. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I thought about bringing a knife for symbolism, but you're so thin, you might actually die if I stabbed you, and I have no intention of letting you die tonight. If you're dead, you can't feel any pain." Villanelle leans even closer, so close she can feel the warmth of Eve's breath. "I don't let _anyone_ make me feel like I'm an idiot, and you, well: you let me believe you _liked_ me. I have to hand it to you. I bought it, so well done, but also, _big_ mistake. Now, if you'd be so kind and keep still--"

"I never said that", Eve interjects, and Villanelle frowns. "I never said I liked you. _You_ said that. _I_ said I thought about you all the time."

"It's the same thing", Villanelle scowls, digging her thumb into Eve's throat as punishment for her trying to be a smart-ass.

"No, it's not", Eve rasps, voice strained. Villanelle feels her throat working beneath her palm. "It's not the same thing, but I did. I did like you, no matter how screwed up it was. I fucking hated you for what you did, but I liked you, too." Eve swallows and gasps for air. "I _still_ like you. God, Oksana--"

"No", Villanelle objects, giving Eve's throat another painful squeeze. She'd felt torn about hearing her old name when Eve had said it in this same house, in Cafe Radushay, but now, it sounds like a curse, an attempt to render Villanelle defenseless. "Don't try that. It won't work anymore. I don't want to hear you say that name."

Eve makes a choking sound, opens her mouth like she's trying to say something, but nothing comes out, and Villanelle unconsciously must have begun squeezing harder, because Eve's turning red in the face, and the righteous demon inside of Villanelle quivers in pleasure. She leans in, placing her mouth next to Eve's ear, in a manner which would kill them both if Villanelle fired her Makarov; the bullet would fly straight through Eve's skull into Villanelle's, ending them both in a pool of blood and skull fragments and brain matter. A beautiful death, Villanelle thinks...but not tonight.

"Can you feel it?" Villanelle purrs into Eve's ear, lips brushing her earlobe. She smells intoxicating, and Villanelle wants to bite into her skin, taste her, taste the fear itself. There's a sharp jolt pulsing through the pit of her stomach, up to her chest, then down again, and the heat pools between her legs. "Can you _feel_ what you did to me, yet?"

With both hands, Eve pulls on Villanelle's wrist, manages to get a deep breath, then chokes out, "I'm sorry I hurt you."

Villanelle scoffs; Eve's no doubt sorry her little trick with the knife had sent them to where they are right now. Regret has nothing to do with it. She's sorry she fucked up, not sorry she almost killed Villanelle. "Bullshit", she snaps, and how wonderful it feels to be the one who gets to say it, out of the two of them. "Bull. Shit. I'm actually very proud of you, Eve. You turned out to be just as smart as I wanted you to be. You were so clever, so calm before you did it. Now, which hand should I break first; your left or your right? Let's see how _calm_ you are after that."

Eve tries to say something again, but nothing comes out.

"What was that?" Villanelle pulls back from Eve's ear and loosens her own grip a little, letting Eve inhale quickly.

"I said", Eve gasps, meeting Villanelle's eyes, "I forgive you."

The fist inside Villanelle's chest is back, and it grabs her heart, crushing it, because who the hell does Eve think she is, claiming that there's something to forgive? The only thing between them that might somehow - but won't - be forgiven is what _Eve_ had done, _not_ Villanelle. It's a ridiculous statement, a ludicrous attempt at saving her own skin, and Villanelle bites her own lower lip, shakes her head, because the _audacity_ of it. "It's _me_ who has the power to forgive, not you", Villanelle literally grits out through her teeth, seething with fury.

"You did what you had to do", Eve says, voice low, teeth clenched. Villanelle can't stop staring at her mouth when she speaks. "I did what I had to do, and then I understood it. I understood what it feels like to--to have to do something, but to not really want to. I don't think you wanted to hurt Bill, I think you had to, because he knew it was you who was following me in Berlin. I don't think you would have hurt him if you'd had a choice, because that would've made me hate you, like I did, I did, but god, I liked you too. So, so much. I was so focused on getting justice, I didn't see you, everything about you, I didn't--"

Villanelle's nostrils flare. Eve's lying, and she needs to shut up. She needs to shut up, right now, or else, Villanelle will fucking well blow her brains out, she will--

"--I didn't understand just how extraordinary a person you are, and I thought it was too late, I thought I'd never see you again, and when I smelled your perfume, I was so happy I hadn't killed you, and I knew you'd come for me, I knew you'd hurt me or kill me, and I wanted you to come to me, I wanted to tell you that I see you now, I understand what you are--"

"Stop", Villanelle whispers, and no, now _she's_ the one who's pleading. She wills her muscles to move, to squeeze Eve's throat until not a single syllable can escape her mouth, but Villanelle's hand isn't working, it's just loosely holding onto Eve's throat, just resting there, and she can't stop staring, can't stop looking at the movement of Eve's mouth, can't stop replaying her words, and Villanelle hadn't come here tonight to kill her, but if Eve doesn't stop talking, she will leave Villanelle with no choice, she--

"--and before you break me, I need you to hear this", Eve protests, and then her right hand traces Villanelle's hand around her throat, trails it to the inside of her wrist, and Villanelle flinches, wanting to pull away. Eve's touch is like fire on her, even through her sleeve, but she can't move. Her whole body has stopped working. "You'd die in prison", Eve continues. "It would destroy everything you are. I see you, and I see what you are. I get that you have to be free, I get that nothing can contain you. You're a fucking force of nature, and I knew you were, I knew it from the moment I learned about you, and I tried to capture you, I tried so hard to do what I _should_ do, and I--I _can't_ do it." The fingers on Villanelle's arm stroke her gently. "I don't want to hurt you." Then, the same fingers move to the place where Eve had slipped the knife into her stomach, and this time, Villanelle does flinch, her fight-or-flight mode on, and she does want to _hurt_ Eve, so she lets go of Eve's throat, raises herself to her full height and grabs Eve's hand, twists it, shoves her hard, making her body fall to the floor with a wail and a thud.

Her pulse is pounding, hot tingles spreading through her fingers, through her arms, into the rest of her body while she gazes at Eve's petite form lying on the carpet, face hidden by her unruly hair. She's shaking, gasping, but then, she defiantly raises her chin, and she moves her body so that she's back on her knees; kneeling, but _not_ in supplication. She's urging Villanelle on, urging her to do what she wants to do, and it really is breathtaking, seeing the fire roaring in Eve's dark eyes, and suddenly, Villanelle has no idea what the hell she wants to do now; she wants to do everything, too much, anything she can. She wants to blow Eve's head to pieces, then glue it back together so she can kill her again, and again, but then again, she wants to fire the gun, hear the bullet rip through Eve's heart, and then she wants to tear her open, feast on her insides, crawl inside of her skin, but a moment later, she wants Eve's clothes gone, wants to crawl inside of her in another manner, wants to be one with her, wants her wet and moaning, wants her screaming, but not from pure pain, from something else, from--

"Go on, then", Eve whispers, interrupting Villanelle's tangled thoughts. She realizes her gun hand is clammy, and Eve's wrapped her fingers around it, but isn't tearing the gun away from her grasp - she's positioning the barrel against her _own_ forehead, and Villanelle stares, shocked. What Eve's doing isn't submission, isn't restitution: she's _challenging_ Villanelle.

"You want to hurt me", Eve says, her face uncertain, but full of what Villanelle recognizes as fury - the same fury she'd seen in Eve's eyes in Paris, just before the pain. "Come on, do it. I'm right here, _Oksana._  If you want to hurt me so much, then stop fucking around and do what you came to do."

 _"What you came to do."_ Villanelle inhales so deeply she thinks she sucks up all the oxygen that's left in the room. She looks away; something she's never done while pointing a gun to someone's head. She should revel in it, staring into someone's terrified eyes, but this is Eve, and there's no terror in her eyes anymore, just flames, and why, _why_ must everything be so _different_ with her?

Eve slowly raises herself off the floor, her hands still folded tightly around Villanelle's holding the gun. "Do what you need to do, and then disappear", Eve says firmly, righting herself, and Villanelle's arm starts cramping. She needs to move her index finger onto the trigger. She needs a moment of silence to be able to think straight. She needs to do something to get Eve to shut her mouth, because she isn't playing around, she's serious: there's decisiveness in her voice, the same kind there'd been when she'd told Villanelle that she was going to find the thing Villanelle cared about, and then kill it, and she'd done just that, hadn't she? She'd momentarily killed Villanelle's fantasy about the two of them, cut off the wire between them, but Villanelle's head had filled itself with new fantasies, and the wire had lengthened itself, grown back together where it'd been severed, their connection as alive as ever, and now, she's here, with Eve, who won't stop fucking talking.

"Just disappear, and stay away. I won't try to find you." Eve lets go with one hand, brings that hand up Villanelle's neck, tracing it, caressing her jaw and temple softly - adoringly - and something starts breaking inside of Villanelle's chest; there's a dent, a single scratch in her glass shield, and the more Eve touches her, the more the damage starts to spread, the more the fire spreads over her skin. "I _am_ glad you're alright", Eve says, her eyes on Villanelle's face. "And I _am_ sorry. I'm sorry I didn't understand just how exceptional, how remarkable a human being you are."

Villanelle feels Eve's other hand start pushing her own hand - the one holding the Makarov - down, towards the floor, away from Eve's head, but she doesn't attempt to undo Villanelle's grip on the gun. Eve just points it away from her, from both of them. Then, that hand travels up to her scar again, to her heart, leaving blazing heat in its wake, while Eve's other hand cups Villanelle's face, and Villanelle wants to scream because this is _not_ what she'd imagined, this is _not_ the fantasy where she rips Eve's limbs free from her body, this _isn't_ Eve kneeling in anything close to supplication: this is Eve _matching_ her, and goddammit, she can't take it.

She should end this. She should be smart, she should move, but Eve steps closer, and Villanelle's breath hitches, stops in her throat. The touch on her face feels like hissing hot coals on her sensitive skin, melting her, and then suddenly, both of Eve's hands are cradling Villanelle's face, thumbs under her jaw, fingertips on her cheekbones, and Eve's eyes are so deep, so alive, making Villanelle part her lips, let out a shuddering breath, and how she aches, how she wants to devour and take, take, take Eve in any way, in every possible way.

With a sense of relief, Villanelle knows _exactly_ what she wants right now. The broken bones and the cut fingers will have to wait. She licks her lips, gazes at Eve's, and then, her voice hoarse, she whispers, "If this is just another trick to get me to put my gun down so you can kill me for real, tell me now", because this could be just another one of Eve's games, this could be her getting Villanelle to lower the gun, only to reach for it and kill her properly, this time around.

A small smile ghosts over Eve's parted lips, and she shakes her head, leans even closer, presses her _forehead_ against Villanelle's and it's such a soft gesture, so real, Villanelle thinks she'll go up in flames if she doesn't get something else, something more, right now--

"You're a goddamn creation", Eve whispers, and Villanelle feels Eve's breath on her own lips, can almost taste her already. "I'm so sorry I couldn't see that before." She swallows, then takes a step back, eyes bright and wet. "Just--please leave, okay? Please just stay away from here. I _promise,_ I'll let you be." The plea in Eve's voice is real, but she isn't pleading for her life: she's pleading with Villanelle, for Villanelle to stay away so she'll stay safe, but it doesn't matter how selfless that is, it doesn't matter that Eve's accepted that Villanelle needs to be free, because right now, Villanelle's not going _anywhere:_ she puts the gun's safety back on, throws it towards the kitchen - away from them, so far away there's no way Eve could get to it in time - and then, she gives herself permission to release her inner demon, to do exactly as she fucking well pleases.

She grips Eve's shoulders, claims her mouth, presses her own lips onto Eve's hungrily, relentlessly, painfully even, and finally - _finally_ \- she does what she'd been wanting to do forever: she eats Eve up like she's the very cradle of life itself, and Eve's _isn't_ fighting her. She seems momentarily surprised, paralyzed, slack like a doll, warm mouth neither pulling away nor kissing back, but then her hands are everywhere, clawing at Villanelle's hair, clothes, skin, matching the pace of Villanelle's mouth, meeting her more feverishly than in Villanelle's wildest daydreams, and she lets Eve push her to the floor, lets Eve straddle her, for there's no knife between their bodies now, there's just Eve's taste and scent and heat and lust and whimpers and desperate hands and god, Villanelle throbs, needs more, needs at least some kind of release after carrying around all that pent up frustration and want for months and months.

Like reading her mind, Eve, possibly just as impatient herself, shoves Villanelle's clothed legs apart, roughly pushes her body in between them, throws her whole weight on Villanelle while kissing, biting, swallowing her, and the groans Eve makes in the back of her throat are delicious, like the sweetest sound Villanelle's ever heard, a sound going straight to her core, and she violently grazes Eve's neck, back, shoulders and breasts, lifts a fist into her glorious hair and tugs, slips her tongue into her mouth, and Eve's grinding her hips like she wants to merge together with her, just right, just so right, just how Villanelle likes it, and shit, she'd had no idea just _how_ aroused she was: she breaks her mouth away, gasps loudly through her quick orgasm, shuddering from the jolts shooting through her body.

It's too sudden, just the tip of the iceberg, just a promise of everything yet to take and receive, and they've still got all of their clothes on, and Villanelle's head falls back, her breath so short it's nearly painful, and this wasn't how she'd imagined it at all, but even though it'd been fast, her physical need had been sated halfway, and now - _now_ \- she will focus on taking what's _hers._

Eve's staring at her with wide eyes, her face in awe, and Villanelle realizes her climax must've been quite an unexpected sight. Without preamble, Villanelle kicks Eve off her, flips them around, traps Eve's panting body on the floor underneath Villanelle's weight in the exact same manner she'd always imagined doing. She strips out of her own clothes and shoes while straddling Eve, making sure she stays on the floor, then starts pulling Eve's clothes off too, and it's so satisfying to strip every single layer of clothing away from Eve's body, far more satisfying then feeling her own orgasm. For some reason, Villanelle had expected Eve to try to cover herself, but she doesn't - and she shouldn't, when her body's as _nice_ as it is. Her pupils are blown, lovely lips parted, aroused and scared, and why had Villanelle imagined nothing but blood and carnage, when she could have imagined this instead? This is, after all, what she'd thought about so many times while getting herself off, and now that she's got Eve naked beneath her, she wonders if Eve had done that too, while thinking about this happening.

She'll wonder more later. Right now, she's busy running her hands over Eve's body, over her clavicles, into her hair, down to her breasts which are just the perfect handful, pinching her dark nipples, eliciting a sharp gasp from Eve's lips.

"God, no", Eve moans when Villanelle's hand slips down to part her legs. "Wait, no, I can't--"

"Yes, you can." Villanelle puts her hand between Eve's spread thighs, growls at what her fingers encounter; wet, slippery,  _flattering._

"This isn't--" Eve's squeezing her shoulders hard, but not pushing her away, just keeping her in place. "Oh my god, no, you shouldn't, I can't--"

Begging is nice - as long as it's to get Villanelle to proceed, not stop. "Ssh", she hushes, and cuts Eve's objections off by kissing her roughly, because there's no way Eve doesn't want this: she's so unbelievably wet, so hot beneath Villanelle's body. Eve whimpers into her mouth, hands still gripping her shoulders, but then they start moving, start scratching Villanelle's back muscles, arms, hips, ass, thighs, moving everywhere, grabbing almost painfully while Villanelle pants and moves down her body, hooking her teeth into Eve's hip before sliding down in between her legs, spreading them wider, and then, she buries her face between them. It's glorious, everything about her taste; Villanelle lolls out her tongue all the way and strokes Eve's glistening folds, pushes it inside of her, then presses it against her clit, hard and fast, in small pulses, wanting to stay there until Eve's come undone a hundred times over, and the hands in her hair are gripping her strands so hard her scalp is burning, and somewhere above her, Eve _howls._

When Villanelle eventually pushes two fingers inside, reveling in the wetness, in the ease while still keeping her tongue at work, Eve shudders and shouts at the ceiling, writhing underneath the arm Villanelle had draped over Eve's hips, and oh, her orgasm against Villanelle's lips is better than _any_ fantasy of violence and pain. Villanelle wishes Eve would look at her, look into her eyes; she's so responsive, tastes so wonderful, sounds so naughty, thrashes like she's both gagging for it and hating it at the same time, and Villanelle wonders if Eve does hate it a little, for while her touches had been all-consuming and fierce, there'd been real anger there - pure, righteous anger, a sort of violent compulsion behind every kiss and caress, and although they now have got this inevitable dance out of the way, it's by no means the same as forgiveness - for either one of them.

Villanelle moves upwards without bothering to wipe her mouth. She kisses her way up Eve's body, to her breasts, to her blushing chest, making her twitch and gasp unevenly; Villanelle frowns, then realizes Eve's crying.

Oh. Well, this is something she doesn't have the patience to deal with. Slightly flabbergasted, she rolls away, reaches for her clothes and starts to get dressed while Eve stays on the floor, naked, covering her eyes with one hand, chest trembling as she cries over whatever it is that she's feeling. It doesn't bother Villanelle, per se, it's just inconvenient in the terms of bathing in afterglow, or preparing for another round. She's still hot and aroused, still not completely satisfied, but with Eve crying, even Villanelle knows there's no way she'll be getting anything else tonight, unless she takes it by force, which she doesn't really want to do. That said, she sure as hell hopes the tears won't appear every time, because now that she's had Eve, she plans on having her again and again, many times more, in the near future; there's no use in denying it. She knows she'll want this again. She'll take all the time she needs, explore Eve's body, make her feel, make her experience, over and over, what she'd nearly missed out on by stabbing Villanelle in the gut instead of letting her fuck her in the first place, and that feels like the best idea she's had in a long, long time.

When Villanelle's dressed and she's got her Makarov tucked neatly into the back of her jeans, she kneels down on the floor, next to Eve's head. Eve isn't crying anymore; she's simply staring at the ceiling, wet eyes wide, like she's both blown away and horrified about what had just happened between them. She may very well be, Villanelle thinks, for it had been rather sudden, but whatever's making Eve weep, it doesn't stop Villanelle from running a finger down Eve's sweaty front, leaning in close to her ear to whisper, "Thank you. This was much more fun than breaking you." Although, in a way, Villanelle might have done just that, if the empty look in Eve's eyes is anything to judge by. She presses a light kiss to Eve's hair, but she flinches, jerks her head away. Villanelle sighs at the sudden resentment radiating off Eve, rolls her eyes and says, "Next time, I want you in a bed. This carpet is shit." Eve doesn't reply, but she swallows slowly, and that's enough for now.

It's more than enough. Villanelle knows Eve will feel her imprint on and inside her body for many, many days to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added note: I know this is dark, but it will get better.   
> Of course, this is The Void, so "better" could mean many things. Sorry.


	4. Blue Horizon

"How was London?"

Villanelle's hand, which had been on its way to give Ivan half of her snack, stops abruptly. They're strolling down Kalverstraat - Amsterdam's central shopping street - together with a zillion other people carrying labelled bags and drinking Starbucks. She likes this about him; likes that he prefers to speak to her outside, to take her places, instead of hanging at her apartment, but they'd already had this discussion a couple of weeks back, and Ivan had been happy with the way she'd handled Alton Camden. "It was fine. We talked about this."

Ivan reaches over, grabs a handful of _bitterballen_ \- Dutch deep fried croquettes with goat's cheese filling - and regards her intently. "I don't mean the parliamentarian, Villanelle. I mean the trip you made one week ago. Had a nice little reprieve, did you?"

Villanelle feels a sting of irritation, and frustrated, she averts her eyes towards Hunkemöller's window display full of bald mannequins in luscious lingerie. "Stop stalking me."

"I don't have to stalk you", Ivan chuckles around his croquette and comes to stand next to Villanelle, who only glances at him. The bright sunlight makes his grey hair shine like silver. "Your German passport was scanned at Schiphol."

"Okay, so Greta Müller likes to travel, so what?" When she'd killed Camden, she'd used another one of her aliases.

"I don't think Greta Müller has a bone to pick with Eve Polastri", Ivan states, giving Villanelle a very pointed glare. He chews down some more _bitterballen,_ then links his arm with hers and steers them further down the crowded street. "Do you need _us_ to take care of her?"

Villanelle's upper lip twitches at the thought of what her employers could do to Eve, but no - she doesn't want that. "I already took care of her", she explains indifferently and bites into her croquette. It's salty and delicious, makes her close her eyes and groan at its taste. When she opens her eyes again, she spots a passing tourist smiling at her pleasured expression.

"How?"

Villanelle blinks, and for a second she thinks she might actually smile, too, remembering the way Eve had been frightened, had challenged her, and then had given herself up completely. But Villanelle doesn't know how to describe the rush of breaking Eve's spirit like she'd afterwards realized she had, and she's still not completely sure how she feels about the aftermath - about the _tears_ \- so she simply raises her eyebrows and shrugs, while pretending to study the different shop signs.

"That does _not_ sound like you", Ivan says slowly, chewing on his stolen snack. His arm has tightened a bit. "I didn't know you enjoyed _that_ kind of violence."

"I didn't have to be violent", Villanelle half-lies. She steers them towards a bin and throws the food's cardboard container into it. "Do you want to go to AllSaints? Their tailoring is fantastic."

"Do they have anything for me?" he asks as Villanelle nods her head towards a side street which will take them away from most of the tourists.

"They might", she frowns. The sun is warm, but she doubts the weather is what's making her feel uneasy. "I'll buy you something nice if you stop following me."

Ivan stops walking then, and Villanelle almost stumbles forward, her arm still linked with his. "Villanelle", he says in the no-nonsense tone which always means the beginning of a speech. Villanelle sighs and crosses her arms over her chest. "You can find other ways to entertain yourself. If you play with fire, you are--"

"--going to get burnt", Villanelle says at the same time as he does. She shrugs, raises her eyebrows, continues walking. "I like to get a little burnt", she says over her shoulder, and she hears his footsteps following hers. "It feels very nice in my tummy - much better than a knife."

"You're being stupid", he sighs behind her, and the "d" pops, his presumably Eastern accent hard, much harder than her Russian one. "If you mess this up, there will be consequences, Villanelle. You should find another plaything."

They come to a stop in front of AllSaints; in front of a window showing clean cut suits, blouses and pants in shades of black, grey, brown; elegant clothing with a twist, just the sort of thing Villanelle prefers. "I happen to like my current plaything", she objects, suddenly hungry for a cigarette. She hasn't got any on her, but Ivan does. Like reading her thoughts, he digs the packet out of his jacket pocket and hands her a Camel, then lights it for her. At the first drag, she feels some of the tension release itself, but still, her body feels flushed at the thought of all the things she wants to do to Eve, now that the barrier between them had been broken. "Don't be so worried, okay? I know what I'm doing."

"Mm", Ivan hums, lighting a cigarette of his own, and they both know he really wants to say, _"Did you know what you were doing when you let her stab you?"_

Villanelle doesn't like to think about the stabbing itself: it makes something inside of her chest churn, something heavy and hot, so she'd rather think about other things, other things concerning Eve. She inhales the smoke, lets it travel into her body, exhales and runs her pads over her bottom lip. Momentarily, she wonders if Eve would lick her own taste off Villanelle's slender fingers, if she'd take them into her mouth so deeply she'd gag and choke, and Villanelle would writhe in satisfaction. _It's a nice thought,_ she thinks, while she waits for Ivan to say whatever it is he wants to say, since he's just been staring at her for a good minute.

"She's MI5", he eventually reminds her as he flicks some ash off the end of his cigarette. His eyes travel over some of the people passing them. "She could expose you."

"She won't", Villanelle says, and this she knows: there's no way in hell Eve would run to her colleagues and confess what had happened between them. "She's a desk jockey. She's known I'm alive for like, a month now. There are no alerts. She isn't vindictive." Villanelle really likes that word, likes the way her tongue moves when she says it out loud, but then she remembers Ivan doesn't know about her trip to Eve's garden almost a month ago, when she should have been focusing on Camden, and she quickly adds, "She's ashamed, Ivan. I will make sure she stays like that."

"You better", he says as he lets go of his cigarette and puts it out with the heel of his shoe. His clear blue eyes are narrowed, judgmental, but also strangely concerned. She doesn't like that look at all. "But one of these days, you're going to have to explain to me why you can't just terminate her. The world is full of girls. It's worrying, Villanelle. You shouldn't play with your life. That", he points at her midsection, at the scar underneath her beige sweater, "was a lesson. Don't forget who she is."

_I won't,_ Villanelle thinks, and smiles bittersweetly. She could terminate Eve, but she has other plans for her, and by now, Ivan should know that she will remember who Eve Polastri is for as long as she still has air in her lungs.

"And don't let her interfere with the way you operate", he adds. "Your next job is important."

Two days ago, Ivan had given her a postcard of the Ukraine, and he's right: it's an important job, killing a Russian-backed separatist leader hurled up in the outskirts of Kiev, but far more important than her target will be her safety in that particular area; no matter what tricks she's got up her sleeve, she can't make herself look any more local, can't make herself stand out any less than she'll do by just being her, can't get her regional accent to sound natural; the leader, Yaroslav Soskin, likes his local girls, so there's a huge chance of her accidentally giving herself away, as if getting close to said leader won't be difficult enough already, and both her and Ivan know it. "I'll handle it, as I always do", she says, and hopes that she's right, hopes that everything will run smoothly, because she really - _really_ \- doesn't want to die while impersonating a call-girl.

"I know you will, just be extra careful. We've just got you back into shape. I don't want anything to happen to you." He gives her an expectant smile. "Shall we do some shopping then?"

Villanelle's still stuck on his words, still stuck on the "call-girl" part, as well as the "a lesson by Eve Polastri" part, and briefly, she wonders if she really _is_ playing with her life, instead of thinking she's playing with _Eve,_ but no: once bitten, twice shy. She knows what Eve's capable of, and she'll be more cautious this time. Ivan's still staring at her, looking eager to go rummage through the expensive clothes just behind the glass door to their right, so she clears her head, then tilts it while giving him a small smile. "Okay. Let's go."

 

* * *

 

Five days later, at five minutes to midnight, Yaroslav Soskin's gripping fistfuls of Villanelle's hair as she straddles him, leans close to his face, narrows her eyes at him, listens to the gurgling sounds he makes as blood spurts from his gaping neck wound; a five inch cut made by the sharp edge of her fake hotel room key-card. She stares intently, swears his eyes glaze over and become almost black before he lets go of her strands, takes his last breath, sputtering blood, some of it landing on her throat and chin. It feels warm, like summer raindrops. She stays in position for a long time, stays on top of him, watching his hollow face turn white and his bare chest turn red, watching the blood seep into the bed underneath them. The elation's there, but it's short lived; once the light in his eyes is completely gone, she lets out a long breath, wipes her face, neck and chest on his discarded shirt, then eases herself off him.

It doesn't take her long to find the suitcase where he keeps his small armory, and from inside it, she selects a Smith & Wesson Compact. How comical it is that a Russian separatist leader won't use firearms that speak of his beliefs and heritage; out of the two of them, Soskin should have been the one with the Pistolet Makarova, and she throws his dead body a chastising look. Well, he might choose more wisely in the next life, when it comes to both guns and the women he hires for pleasure. She attaches the silencer to the barrel, gets dressed, and then she's out the door, gun behind her back, but only for a moment, because his two guards are still there, and before they know what hit them, they're down on the floor, shot at point blank. Villanelle winces; the sound of their bodies falling to the floor might have woken some of the other guests up, so she hurries past the now dead guards, but takes the stairs rather than the elevator; Soskin has two additional guards by the bar in the hotel lobby, so she'll take the stairs all the way to the underground parking lot, and then make her way from there.

Once she's in a cab, she remembers that the real "Anastasia" - the girl Soskin was supposed to spend the night with - is still sedated and tied up in the first floor accessible bathroom of Soskin's hotel. Villanelle rolls her eyes, shares a look with the driver through the rear-view mirror; the girl will survive until someone finds her. Humans can survive a surprisingly long time without food, although she'll probably be found in the morning at the latest, and in case she's sick - or thirsty - when she wakes up, the toilet bowl will be her new best friend.

 

* * *

 

The swimming pool at the _Premier Palace Hotel_ on Tarasa Shevchenka Boulevard is a thing of wonder: fifty feet long and lined in gorgeous mosaic tiles, it lies under a huge glass vault which is supported by ceramic pillars. Spotlights at the bottom of the pool light it up, giving the chlorine water a turquoise and cool glow, and Villanelle floats on her back, eyes open, staring at the dark sky visible through the vault above her head. If she could, she'd transport this whole place to her apartment. Being alone in a pool so big is almost like being out at sea, floating in the ocean, free. She feels free, most of the time, but now, only an hour after killing Soskin, she feels something else, too: she feels troubled. Not because of him, but because of Eve Polastri.

To say that Villanelle feels haunted by Eve's silent tears would be an overstatement; she's more confused than upset, more curious than irritated, compared to how she'd felt in the actual room, when Eve had cried on the floor. On the plane home, in bed, while walking with Ivan, during the flight to Kiev, she'd searched her mind for a logical explanation as to why Eve had felt the need to shed tears after what Villanelle could only describe as "really good sex". Perhaps it'd been so good she'd felt like crying from all the mind-blowing pleasure, from the feel of Villanelle. Maybe she'd regretted it, although that seems far-fetched. Alternatively, her whole speech about being sorry and wanting Villanelle to be free had been complete bullshit, like her Parisian confession, and she'd only agreed to sex in order to live another day; a thought which makes Villanelle clench her fists and burn with a whole new level of anger. Simply put, she doesn't know, and so far, not knowing has prohibited her from enjoying all the wonderful things that had revealed themselves through their latest meeting; the warmth of Eve's mouth, the feel of her hair, the way her throat had produced something like a sensual, pained shout when she'd come against Villanelle's mouth; these are the things Villanelle wants to spend her time reliving, thinking about, dreaming of experiencing again, but the tears make no sense to her. Anna had cried once, their first time in bed, but she'd laughed right afterwards, while Eve _hadn't,_ and it's colouring Villanelle's memory like ugly, yellow paint on a gorgeous Rembrandt, so she swims to the edge of the pool, to where her bathrobe and clutch are resting.

One evening a few weeks ago, Ivan had taken Villanelle's phone, and come back with it the next day; he'd had someone install a router, a program which generates a made-up number with a different area code every time the owner of the phone makes an out-going call. That call will then bounce between a dozen different cell towers, making tracing it close to impossible, as long as the length of the call itself doesn't exceed approximately 75 seconds. Now, Villanelle dries her hand on her bathrobe and digs out her phone, then stares at the screen for a long time while she supports herself on her other arm, unwilling to get out of the water.

It's not even midnight in London, yet. Eve should still be awake, and Villanelle won't know the reason behind the tears unless she _asks,_ so she selects Eve's name out of her contacts. There's no use in being nervous; she'd called Eve once before, in Moscow, and tonight, Eve will either pick up, or not pick up. Or, she'll end the call as soon as she hears Villanelle's voice, but by doing so, Villanelle will still get an answer of sorts.

_"Hello?"_

Villanelle leans her upper body onto the mosaic edge. Eve's greeting had sounded neutral. "Why did you start crying?"

There's a long silence, and Villanelle checks if the call's been cut off, but it's still connected, the seconds ticking away, and then there's a faint sound of rustling, footsteps, a door opening and closing. Villanelle knows that sound; it's the back door of Eve's house. The mustache husband must be home, if she has to go outside to take the call, but she's still quiet, so Villanelle adds, "The sex was amazing, so why did you cry?"

Silence, then, _"Um. I, I, I was just--I didn't expect it."_

Fair enough, since Villanelle kind of hadn't expected it either, seeing as her original plan had been to break several of Eve's bones. She glances at the screen; the call's 27 seconds in. She switches to speaker-phone in order to be able to monitor the length of the call, and places the phone down on her robe. "Mm", she hums, and then she waits.

_"I didn't think you'd--I mean, I'd prepared myself for a lot, but not for...that. And I hadn't, you know, um, actually thought about it. Well, okay, I had, once, but just once, well, also when we were at your apartment, but after I sta--after I hurt you, I didn't think you wanted to--to do that, with me, anymore."_ A pause, then, _"It was overwhelming. For a long time, I thought I'd killed you, and then you were there, and I sort of had to...I don't know, touch you, to see if you were real, to...Oh, I don't know. It was just--it felt very overwhelming. I didn't expect to end up...end up like that, with you."_

"Oh", Villanelle sighs, and doesn't really know what else she can say, because the most important thing for her had been to make sure she wasn't alone in her assessment of the quality of the sex. "Okay", she adds, eyes on the clock. Her lower half in the water feels surprisingly warm, when it should feel cold; she's been swimming for a while now.

_"It's just a lot to take in. I don't expect you to und--"_

"Bye", Villanelle says abruptly, and ends the call at exactly 74 seconds in, just to be on the safe side. She puts the phone back into her clutch, and turns around so that she's got her arms outstretched on the edge of the pool, the back of her head against the tile. The water reaches the top of her chest, right where her heart is - her heart, which feels strangely heavy, despite getting confirmation that Eve's crying hadn't been because of Villanelle not handling her body in the right way. It hadn't been about that at all, and it should make her feel light as a feather, should make it easy for her to recall the taste of Eve on her lips, but she's still a little troubled, and starting to get annoyed.

She wonders what Eve will feel now, when she sleeps with her husband - _if_ she does. Will she make comparisons? Will she touch him, and be surprised at how rough his body is compared to Villanelle's, even though she's been married for a long time, even though she probably knows his body like the back of her hand? Will he go down on her, and will she feel irritated by his scratchy chin, his thick mustache? Will she shout, with him, like she had with Villanelle? Will she come, at all? Can _he_ make her body sing, wind her up until she's strung tighter than a violin string? Can she want him, after having something else, something _better,_ because Villanelle _is_ better, there's no doubt about it, there's no way he could do what _she_ had done to--

" _Daruĭte_ ", a male voice calls from somewhere behind her, interrupting her thoughts. Sighing, she glances over her shoulder; it's the concierge. How peculiar; she hadn't heard him approaching. "We must clean the water before morning", he explains, gesturing towards the pool, looking slightly nervous.

" _Dobre_ ", she sighs, and looks away. Upon coming back from killing Soskin, the concierge had promised that she could use the pool for an hour, even though it'd closed at 10 p.m. That hour must have gone by faster than she'd realized. " _P'yatʹ khvylyn_ ", she adds, and he scurries away. She needs a few more minutes before getting out of the water, so she lets her body sink to the bottom of the pool, surrounding herself with complete silence. No jets are on, no shower streams. Underneath the surface, she closes her eyes, blocking out the blue glow, and she wonders if this is what Eve had felt like when they'd had sex: floating in euphoria, but knowing it would eventually have to end, or else, she'd drown and die. 


	5. Smog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This is a London chapter, so you know what's up.

Ten days after Kiev, Villanelle is back in London, at the _Radisson Blue Edwardian Berkshire._ Her targets, Mikael Lange and Franziska Beck, a German cyber hacking-couple, are staying at the _Bloomsbury Hotel_ by Tottenham Court Road, a single tube stop away, and Villanelle's plan is simple; she'll follow the couple as they head out for the night, introduce herself, make bedroom-eyes, accompany them to their hotel room, shoot them right between the eyes. She doesn't actually like killing people with guns; it's too quick, unless she shoots them somewhere that wounds them fatally but makes them die slowly. But then, they could scream, and that would open a whole new door of potential trouble, so all in all, the anticipation leading up to the completion of her mission will feel like the first taste of something forbidden, but once they're dead, she'll feel empty rather than satisfied. And that's where Eve Polastri comes in.

Villanelle had checked the _Bridge Club_ website, but there was nothing to indicate Nikolas Polastri wouldn't be at home - with his _wife_ \- tonight, so Eve will have to come to her. Villanelle won't call; she wants to see Eve's eyes widen at the sight of her. She hasn't completely scrapped her idea of taking Eve out of the country; she'd like more than just one night here and there, but there's a lot of work to be done; Ivan has a whole set of missions for her to complete, so stealing Eve away wouldn't be wise at the moment. This city will have to do. A quick google search reveals that Eve will most likely walk to the Pimlico tube station south of Thames House on Millbank, and from there, she'll take the underground to her home in Finchley. The area around the Pimlico station is busy at rush-hour, and will thereby be the perfect place to meet. Humming to herself, Villanelle changes out of her Miu Miu dress and throws on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, making herself a regular woman walking the streets of central London in June, making herself blend in. She finishes off her look with a deep blue baseball cap and cheap Converse sneakers, and then, she's off to scare the hell out of Eve - again.

 

* * *

 

At three minutes past five in the afternoon, Eve exits the MI5 headquarters and starts heading down John Islip Street. Villanelle watches her through the first floor windows of the _DoubleTree_ by Hilton lobby, and snickers at what she sees: Eve looks _miserable_. Her shoulders sag beneath her button-down, her hair is an absolute mess. She reminds Villanelle of a distressed puppy. She heads out of the lobby and trails Eve from only a few feet away, nostrils flaring, trying to smell her, but the dust of the sidewalk and the scents of everyone passing keep interfering.

It's a good ten minute walk to Pimlico, and once the station's in sight, Villanelle picks up her pace and grabs Eve's elbow just as she's about to descend the steps down to the platform.

"Wha--", Eve begins, sees Villanelle's face up close, then rips her arm free. "Jesus!"

"Ha, I got you", Villanelle grins, and takes in Eve's face; she's got circles under her eyes and her skin is tight over her cheekbones. She mustn't be sleeping too well. "How was your day?"

"What are _you_ doing here?" Eve hisses, looking around like she's afraid someone might see them. "You were supposed to stay away."

Villanelle grabs her arm again, and this time, Eve doesn't pull away as Villanelle leads them out of the way of the other commuters, but when she turns to Eve again, Eve's eyes are on the ground, her distressed gaze averted. "Aww", Villanelle purrs, pouting. "Look at you. Bad day?"

"Yeah, now that you're here", Eve grits out, still not looking up. At a closer inspection, Villanelle realizes Eve's cheeks are a little pink, and her breathing's a tad faster than it should be from the walk to the underground. "Niko's waiting for me." Eve finally looks up, dark eyes hard and smoldering, warming Villanelle's insides pleasantly, despite the mention of her husband. "You _got_ what you wanted. Aren't we 'even-steven' now?"

Villanelle barks out a laugh, a real laugh, and then she stares at Eve with wide eyes, because really? Had Eve actually thought-- "Did you leave your brains at the office? I think I told you last time, that the next time we see each other, we won't be on the floor."

Eve's eyes widen even more, and there it is: pure panic. She gulps, "What do you want?"

Oh, what a million dollar question that is. Villanelle looks up at the sky, sticks her tongue into her cheek, putting on a fake brainstorming mask. Then, she pretends to have a revelation of sorts, and she tightens her grip on Eve's slender arm while looking into her eyes. "I want to have _fun,_ Eve."

Eve's eyes are suddenly wet, glistening, and if she starts crying now, in the middle of the street, Villanelle might actually push her down the stairs to the station. That'll get her home to her husband faster. "Why?" Eve whispers, voice trembling, and Villanelle realizes Eve's arm is trembling too. "Why _me?"_

Villanelle's clever enough to understand that Eve isn't asking why Villanelle's punishing Eve of all people; that answer is obvious. She's asking why they'd ended up like this in the first place, why Villanelle had taken such a liking to her during their little game of cat and mouse. The similarities between Eve and Anna Leonova aren't lost on Villanelle; she knows exactly which things about Eve's features are pulling her in, but mentally, Eve is _nothing_ like Anna; Eve is ferocious, bold and brave. Eve is a match. Eve is a challenge, and Villanelle could say as much, but she settles for, "You chose to come after me, remember?"

Eve looks defeated at that. She shakes her head slowly, like she's not agreeing with anything, but Villanelle's words are nothing but true. "What do you want?" she asks again.

Villanelle wants to exercise her revenge slowly; she wants to hurt Eve, just a little; she wants to make Eve submit to her; she wants Eve gasping and writhing, hating herself for reacting to Villanelle in such a manner, but saying these things out loud right now would cause too much resistance, so while smiling sweetly, like they're just two old friends making plans to have coffee, she says, "I want you to meet me tonight. The _Radisson_ on Oxford Street. Room 311, at midnight. If I'm not there by then, wait in the lobby."

"No", Eve protests, looking like she wants to scream, but when she continues, her voice is low. "No, you know what? I don't want to, and my husband's going to wonder--no. I can't--"

"Um, yep, you can", because this isn't about what Eve wants. Villanelle lets go of her arm, then places her palm on Eve's neck, leans in, finally smelling her scent. It's wonderful, makes something stir deep down in her stomach. "If you're not there, I will get very bored and mad, and trust me; you don't like it when I'm either one of those things." Eve's stiffened, and Villanelle would like to place a mock-comforting kiss on her cheek, but they're in the middle of the street. "Go on. You don't want to miss your train."

It shouldn't be possible for Eve's shoulders to sag even more, but they do, and without a word, Eve turns her back to Villanelle and hurries down into the station, together with a swarm of other people going home from work. Villanelle stays by the entrance for several minutes, dizzy with Eve's scent, dizzy with what she knows is to come. Eve will be there, if she knows what's good for her.

 

* * *

 

Just as Villanelle had predicted, Mikael Lange's and Franziska Beck's empty eyes don't do a thing for her. Their half-naked bodies rest on the hotel bed, embracing, almost like the dead lovers Romeo and Juliet in Leighton's _Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets,_ but there really isn't anything beautiful about the scene, to Villanelle; everything had been over before it'd even begun, and as she slips her little black dress back on, she wonders if she should've held off a little longer before shooting them at point blank, should've at least gone down on Franziska while looking at Mikael, at the excitement in his eyes and the want visible through his boxers...but no. She didn't want these people. She wants someone else. It's already twenty past eleven, and she needs to get back to the _Radisson._ Taking one last look in the mirror, to make sure her dark wig and golden contacts are still in place, she grabs her clutch and walks out the door, smiling at the thought of the maid finding the dead couple the next morning.

Instead of taking the tube, Villanelle walks the distance between the two hotels. Oxford street is crowded with people, even at this late hour. All store windows are lit up, spotlighting expensive clothing and accessories, but Villanelle, who normally loves buying things, doesn't even glance at what London's busy shopping street has to offer; her pulse is pounding, feet moving her body quickly, anticipation pooling hotly in the pit of her stomach. She tells herself it's pent-up lust from being so close to having sex, but then not going through with it, all while knowing it's total bullshit: Eve's winding her up, and it feels both exciting and painful.

Once back in her hotel room, Villanelle eases her wig off, then releases her blonde hair with a sigh. Next, she plucks out her contacts, puts them into a plastic mini-grip bag, and then places the bag into her suitcase; she's not leaving anything behind, in case there had been a camera somewhere. She briefly wonders if she should shower, but that would mean making an effort, and she's not the one who should be doing that, so she simply slips out of her heels, dress and underwear, then puts on a satin robe; courtesy of the hotel.

At ten past midnight, Villanelle starts to grow impatient. She lies on the bed, hands clenched, staring at the ceiling, worrying her bottom lip. She's tense and frustrated and really wants to make Eve suffer, but she isn't here. Her stomach starts boiling at the thought of the ways she could show just _how_ bored and mad she gets when Eve doesn't--

There's a hard knock on the door. Villanelle sits up, then jumps up and pads over to open it, revealing Eve, hair tied back, wearing a trench coat, a black dress and grey pumps. Villanelle lets her eyes travel over Eve's form; had she dressed up just for Villanelle? No, she'd probably dressed up for whichever boring nerd colleagues her husband thinks she's at a late night meeting with. Still, Villanelle feels flushed, and she pulls the door open wide, letting Eve, who doesn't even look at her, enter.

She's here. That's something, at least. "Okay, you really need to cheer up", Villanelle mutters when she shuts the door. "I'm in no mood for that face."

"Good", Eve says, still not looking at her. "Maybe you can find someone else to screw then."

Villanelle chuckles. Oh, Eve _is_ bold. She loves it, wonders just how pissed off Eve would be if she were to find out what Villanelle had done less than an hour ago. "Tsk. So feisty. I can think of better ways for you to get rid of all that--well, whatever it is that's making you so grumpy." Shame, probably. Self-hate, loathing, anger, _desire._ The sex had been good, and if the sex is good, there's no reason not to want it again. Villanelle's busy staring at Eve's shoes, so she doesn't fully register that Eve finally turns around, doesn't register that she closes the distance between them--

\--and shoves Villanelle, hitting her in the stomach, right where the scar from the stab wound is.

It'd been an open palm, but still, it knocks the air out of her, and she bends, lifts a hand to where Eve had touched her, stares at her with a disbelieving expression, although she isn't really that surprised: Eve's eyes are wide and alert, full of resentment and contempt and...something else. But still, Eve had _shoved_ her, and while Villanelle suspects she hasn't yet felt half of what violent rage Eve's truly capable of, it'd still been physical contact. Growling like a pissed-off animal, she advances upon Eve, who starts walking backwards, face now twisted in fear, until the backs of her calves hit the bed.

"Wait, wait, wait", Eve pleads, holding out her hands as if to shield herself from Villanelle, who quickly wraps her hand around Eve's throat and pushes them both down on the bed so that she's straddling Eve's hips.

"Don't make me hurt you", Villanelle hisses, grabbing both of Eve's wrists with her free hand, capturing them. Of course she wants Eve to suffer for what she'd done, of course she wants to cause her pain, but to be perfectly honest, she's in no mood for a physical fight, in no mood to get bruises on either herself or Eve; tonight, she wants Eve's agony to be spiritual, wants Eve's shame to feel like a supernova exploding inside of her chest, spreading out, staying inside of her. Slowly, she releases Eve, who's stopped thrashing, but still looks both furious and frightened. Villanelle sighs, "Eve, calm down. I don't want to hurt you."

Eve sneers, then brings a hand up to touch her own throat. Villanelle knows her grip hadn't really hurt. "Don't you? Isn't _hurting_ me the whole point of this?"

It sort of is, but Villanelle's too impatient, too much in a rush, to go into detail. "Don't pretend you know what I'm thinking, Eve. I get angry when people do that."

"I don't have to, you're clear as a goddamn stream." Eve props herself up on her elbows, almost mirroring how they'd been when she'd stabbed Villanelle, only the other way around. "Why else would you do this to me? Why else would you just walk back into my life, if not to get your revenge? I told you to disappear, I told you I wouldn't follow you, so why the _hell_ are you back here?"

"Argh", Villanelle groans, and throws her head back dramatically. "Why are you so annoying tonight? I told you, I just want to have fun with you."

"Oh, yeah." Eve wriggles underneath her, like she tries to crawl backwards, but Villanelle tenses her thighs, keeping Eve in place. "I'm having a great time." Villanelle looks down at her, and cheeks flushed, she whispers, "I don't fucking get you. _What_ do you want?"

"This", Villanelle says matter-of-factly, and runs her hand down the front of Eve's dress. "It was a little quick last time."

Eve draws a deep breath. "Fuck you."

"Yeah", Villanelle laughs, loving the struggle and hatred in Eve's eyes, "that's exactly what I want. It's exactly what you want, too. Isn't it, Eve?" She loves the sound of Eve's name; it's sharp but drawn out, and the way her bottom lip brushes her front teeth when she pronounces it feels nice. Slowly, her right hand travels up to Eve's hair. She opens it, runs her fingers through it, enjoying its coarseness - enjoying the way Eve closes her eyes while still looking like she wants to stab Villanelle all over again. She probably does, a lot, and it's exactly what Villanelle wants tonight: she wants Eve to fight both Villanelle and herself, and then, she wants to hear the desperation and shame in Eve's voice as she gives in, pleads and begs Villanelle to do something - _anything_ \- to make her body shudder.

"So _this_ is how it's going to be then?" Eve sighs when Villanelle's hands start tugging the cap sleeves and the top of the dress down, reach behind her to get to the zipper; she momentarily moves over to be able to slide the dress off Eve completely. Again, she takes her position on Eve's hips, but says nothing. This _is_ how it's going to be, but she doubts it'll make Eve any less angry, because she looks defeated and enraged all at once, and whispers, "I thought you--I thought one night was all you wanted. I thought it was all you wanted, since--since the beginning of this. I thought when you called me, you just wanted--I don't know. I thought you'd be done with me, once we'd..."

Villanelle had thought so too, but there's no way in hell she'll tell Eve that she's the first exception since Anna Leonova. As it is now, she sees no clear end to her desire, sees nothing that could extinguish the burning flame that is her want to both humiliate Eve, and make her moan. If Eve tried to kill her right now, she suspects not even an attempt like that could make her body roar any less. Breaking Eve down again would only be that much more rewarding, after something like that. Focusing on her task at hand, she slides the straps of Eve's bra down, then bends forward, kissing her skin from throat to breast.

"This is a really messed up way to make me repay you", Eve whispers, sounding genuinly upset, making Villanelle chuckle on the inside. Her breath hitches when Villanelle hooks her teeth into the bra cup and pulls it down, then tongues over her nipple. "God, this is wrong on so many levels, I can't--"

"Oh, break my heart again, why don't you", Villanelle mutters sarcastically before she bites down on Eve's nipple and shoves a hand in between her legs. Eve presses her thighs together, but she pries them apart, loving the resistance, loving the way Eve forces her to be a little bit rough with--

"I didn't know I could break you heart."

Villanelle opens her eyes and releases Eve's breast. She feels like someone's dropped a pile of bricks on her back, breath leaving her lungs, and the heat in her stomach turns into ice, making her whole body freeze over. With one sentence, Eve has managed to make her feel everything all over again, and fuck, it's so painful she wants to scream because she'd liked Eve - really _liked_ her - and her body's right underneath Villanelle's, skin hot, underwear wet, and Villanelle should still hate her. She should still despise her from the bottom of her heart, and yet - _yet_ \- she wants Eve to enjoy what Villanelle does to her body, but she shouldn't, and oh, it sends her cold blood racing through her veins, makes her rip Eve's underwear down to her knees, makes her push her fingers inside without warning, like she wants to claw her feelings straight out of Eve's core.

Eve actually hisses, squeezing her eyes shut tightly. "Fuck you", she repeats, groaning, nails digging into Villanelle's robed shoulder blades, and that sound, those hate-filled words, should make her feel ecstatic, should make her feel high as a kite, but they don't. Instead, Eve's pain-filled whines make Villanelle stop and stare, make her - for some insane reason - feel _terrible,_ so she slows down, letting herself be gentler, and right away, Eve's sounds go from anguished to bordering on pleasured, and yes, this is what Villanelle wants, this is what she wants to hear, so she leans down, guides Eve's lips to hers, places a languid, soft kiss on them, and Eve bites down on her bottom lip; hard, but not enough to draw blood. It stings deliciously, and Villanelle runs her tongue over her jaw--

\--and when Eve's orgasm hits, Villanelle grabs her hair, making her open her eyes in the middle of it, and in that moment, when Eve moans and arches her back, Villanelle feels her own body pulsing, too.

"Shit", Eve gasps, and covers her face with her hands, hiding her eyes from Villanelle's intense stare. Momentarily, Villanelle wonders if she herself is about to faint, but then she realizes her own light-headedness is simply her arousal screaming for release, and she unties the knot of her robe, slips it down her shoulders, baring her body, and Eve must feel the fabric pool around them because she opens her eyes and stares at Villanelle's naked form, and then at the scar of her own making. She isn't crying, this time around. 

"Touch it", Villanelle gasps, but her command comes out sounding like a plea. Eve hesitates, but then lifts a trembling hand and runs a finger over the still rough texture of the scar, and everything about her face screams of her inner turmoil, her _guilt,_ and begs for forgiveness. She won't get that, at least not tonight. Villanelle snaps out of her own analysis and brings her hand to Eve's face, to her sweaty cheek, to her luscious lips. Carefully, she traces Eve's lower teeth with her thumb, then pushes a little more of her hand inside, opening Eve's jaw wide, and she throbs and aches, wants to move up and bring herself down on that beautiful mouth, wants Eve's tongue on her, wants to bury Eve's flustered and frightened face between her legs. Somehow, Villanelle knows Eve's never done anything like that; her admission in Paris could have been either about sex with a woman or stabbing one - or _both_  - so slowly, she hikes herself upwards, onto Eve's chest, which rises and falls quickly, but Villanelle needs this or she's going to lose her goddamn mind which is already spinning around like a shooting star out of control. With one hand, she grips Eve's hair, tightly but gently, and with the other, she grabs Eve's chin, keeping her mouth open. She wonders if she should flip them around, to give Eve a sense of control...but no, she'd had that last time, and tonight, Villanelle wants the upper hand.

Eve swallows visibly. "Go on", she whispers then, voice strained but eyes on fire, and she licks her lips, wetting them. She's reading Villanelle's face; her want must be visible. "You'll do it anyway, so go on, get it over with."

Her words, no matter the spite in them, go straight to the wet ache between Villanelle's legs, and she moves up until her thighs are on either side of Eve's head, her spread out hair like a black halo, dark tresses in Villanelle's fists, and she lowers herself down, feels Eve's laboured breath first, and then her damp lips. Something in Villanelle's gut explodes like a blinding collision of stars, and she lets out a low moan because _fuck,_ the amount of times she'd imagined this. And precisely like she'd imagined, Eve's inexperienced, so Villanelle grinds down, whispers, "Just kiss me--slowly", surprised at her own breathlessness, and while she'd very much like for Eve's tongue to move in circles, it feels nice like this, she just needs something more, she just needs--

\--Eve's hands reach up to run over Villanelle's thighs: she grabs them, uses her nails, digs in so hard she could break the skin. Her grip is all the supplication, all the admittance of submission that Villanelle needs from her; with a pleased sigh, she leans forward and rocks down hard, loses herself in the jolts streaming through her body, keeps going until Eve's gasps become as loud as hers.


	6. Quantum Multiverse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in London, again. Heads-up!

July in Amstedam is surprisingly warm. Villanelle enjoys the sun as much as she can, sits on the street terraces drinking wine or reading a book, spends some of her hard-earned money by strolling around Kalverstraat, eats more ice cream than should be physically possible, pretends to be a tourist and takes several canal tours around the city by boat. She's calm, but carries something around with her, something that feels like standing on rocky ground, like she's about to stumble and twist her ankle; she tries to recall her violent fantasies; tries, while she's smoking a cigarette or sitting on a park bench, to imagine all the things she still _thinks_ she wants to do to Eve Polastri; the sinister, disastrous things - but she can't. She can't daydream in darkness without forcing herself, and daydreams shouldn't be forced; they should feel warm and embracing, like slipping into a warm bath, but Villanelle's baths get colder and colder every day, and she finds no real warmth in cutting Eve's skin, burning the soles of her feet, or beating her until she vomits. Instead, the warmth comes in the form of fantasies where they're alone, where Eve isn't filled with hate and regret, but with admiration and longing, like she'd been in Paris, before everything had gone to hell, and Villanelle can't wrap her head around herself, can't understand why she's failing, why her vendetta keeps becoming something else, something she can't place her finger on.

"My dear girl, you look like shit", Ivan points out one day, while they're having lunch on Rokin. "May I ask what's keeping you up at night?"

"No, you may not", Villanelle replies, and in her irritation, takes a gulp way too big, and nearly spits half of it out on the table between them. Sighing, she leans her head into her palm, and plays around with her food. She looks up, sees Ivan studying her, and throws her fork down, hisses, "Don't do that. I'm fine. It's a hot day, and I have cramps."

"We'll order some ice for you, then." Ivan averts his eyes and goes back to eating his food, but Villanelle knows he doesn't quite believe her.

In the evening, in bed, she allows herself to do some soul-searching; she _hasn't_ forgiven Eve. She doesn't want to forgive her. Sex hasn't made up for what had happened between them in Paris, but Villanelle finds herself thinking about the actual stabbing - the actual trick - less and less, finds herself thinking more and more about touching Eve in ways which aren't purely violent. What she's been feeling for the last couple of weeks is strangely familiar, somehow, from a long time ago; it's almost like what Villanelle used to feel about Anna Leonova: she'd set her mind on Anna, and when she'd finally had her, finally got her to admit her feelings and her want, Villanelle had half-expected herself to get bored after sleeping together a few times. For a long time, she'd been plagued by feeling like she was under Anna's spell, like Anna's words of kindness and her generous attention had wrapped Villanelle around Anna's little finger, so she'd set out to get Anna into bed, to turn all that kindness into desire, and she'd succeeded, but to her surprise, after sleeping together a handful of times, she'd found herself wanting it even more, every day, all the damn time, like she couldn't get enough of Anna, and she'd wondered, then, at barely eighteen years old, if that was what love felt like.

Now, she can't seem to get enough of Eve, can't seem to stop wanting to break her down. In a similar way as she'd wanted the things which gave Anna power over her to turn into something else, she wants Eve's raging hate to turn into surrender, but is it the same thing? Is history repeating itself, or is she repeating her own history? She thinks about this as she stares out the window. It's a dark evening, the sky illuminated by Amsterdam's bright lights.

She'd liked Eve. She'd liked her a lot, and now, she doesn't know what she feels for the woman in question, but Anna...Anna had still been something different, something that can't be replicated or replaced. It wouldn't do Villanelle any good either, trying to find or feel something identical, because what she'd felt for Anna had cost her dearly - way more than a knife in her stomach; she'd lost years of her life. Of course, if she hadn't killed Anna's husband, the Twelve might not have wanted her, but at the time, when she'd first been sent to the women's penitentiary, it had hurt a hundred times more than the blade Eve had pushed into her...and yet, after she'd been freed from prison, after her training had been completed, she _hadn't_ gone after Anna. She _hadn't_ wanted to hurt her. But with Eve...

Groaning, she rolls over, and starts punching her pillow, keeps going until her arm tires. She's due in London next week. Maybe then, she'll find out why she's having such difficulty exercising her righteous vengeance. She closes her eyes, hoping she'll dream of smacking Eve's head into a wall, but knows not to keep her fingers crossed.

 

* * *

 

The completion of Villanelle's next mission in England requires several days of utterly boring planning and stalking, so the night before she kills a former high ranking member of Her Majesty's Armed Forces, she tells Eve to come over and visit her at the _K West Hotel & Spa._ Eve's reluctance seeps through the phone, but regardless of her numerous objections, she turns up, but unlike last time, tonight she's in her office clothing, and Villanelle wonders if she'd gone home at all between work and coming to the hotel.

"Nice of you to show up", Villanelle says as she opens the first few buttons of Eve's blouse.

"It's not like I had a choice", Eve says lowly, so quietly, Villanelle barely hears her. Eve's hands are clenched into fists, hanging by her sides.

"Oh, I see", Villanelle snickers, and parts Eve's blouse. "A grown woman not in charge of her own actions. I get it; someone else forced you to come here. Someone else made you stab me." She leans in to hook her teeth into Eve's neck, but Eve pulls back, making Villanelle groan in frustration. She grabs Eve's arms, pulls her back to stand in front of her. "What is it now?"

Eve stares at her, dark eyes burning as usual, face twisted into silent rage. "You know I hate you, don't you?"

"No, you don't", Villanelle objects, and digs her nails into Eve's arms, keeping her still so that she can taste her throat. Eve's own arms come alive then; her hands start scraping Villanelle's scalp, the nape of her neck, her shoulders, making her gasp. She chuckles, "You want me. You said you still _like_ me. Did you lie?" Eve'd said that, at her house, when Villanelle had aimed a gun at her head, no less.

"No, I...", Eve groans, then grabs the hem of Villanelle's t-shirt, but doesn't lift it up, just holds it. "It's about principles, you asshole; I can sort-of like you and hate you at the same time."

"Great, then we're almost on the same level." Almost, because she hates Eve for what she'd done, for making Villanelle vulnerable, but at the same time, she does have to hand it to her; she's brave; brave to have gutted Villanelle down, brave to have shown up tonight. Villanelle bites down on Eve's shoulder, moves her mouth to her lips, pushes her backwards, and then they're marching across the floor in an anger-fueled dance, hands tugging violently at clothes and dark and blonde hair, their kisses sharp, all teeth, bruising, filled with raw spite and want.

"I fucking hate how you make me feel", Eve swears into Villanelle's hair once they're on the bed, once Villanelle's senses are exploding from the scent of Eve's skin, the way she feels around Villanelle's fingers; warm, silky, wet; _lovely._

"How do I make you feel?" Villanelle mumbles when she moves down, and puts her mouth between Eve's legs. Her question had come out sounding indifferent, but she really wants to hear Eve's reply, wants her to admit that _she_ can turn her inside out. Villanelle tongues over her languidly, with great care, eating her right up, eating up the small, strangled moans which escape her.

"Like I can't breathe", Eve gasps, her voice somewhere between a plea and a cry, and she's clenching and unclenching her fists, making Villanelle wonder if she'd like to bury them in her hair, but won't allow herself to. "Like I can't think straight, like--like I'm drowning." Her thighs are trembling, hips thrusting against Villanelle's mouth, but a little masochistic as she is, she stops, making Eve cry out in what has to be frustration, and climbs back up, slides her fingers back inside.

"God, I'll _kill_ you", Eve moans against Villanelle's mouth when Villanelle rubs her softly with the pad of her thumb, keeping her right on the edge, but refusing to tip her over.

"I'll kill you too", Villanelle says right back, presses a soothing kiss to Eve's cheek, and nuzzles at her ear. She'd meant it as a joke, although she could do it, but this - Eve teetering on the edge of orgasm and crying for it - is so much _better._ Of course, killing Eve while she begs to get off could be fun too, but once wouldn't be enough, not by far, so she teases, "Do you still think about me all the time?" She punctuates the meaning of her words by rubbing a little harder, a little faster.

"Don't", Eve wails, and Villanelle doesn't know whether she means the question or the pressure of her hand, but she keeps going all the same, keeps working her up, keeps repeating her question until Eve interlaces her fingers with Villanelle's, pushes down even harder, and gasps through her orgasm, right into Villanelle's ear, and she's _flying._

"So?" Villanelle asks once Eve's recovering, and kisses her jaw, the corner of her mouth, keeps their hands in place, gauging little aftershocks. She glances up, and swears Eve looks like she's suspended in some kind of bliss. Villanelle knows she'll shatter it by voicing her question yet again, but she can't help herself; she repeats, "Do you still think about me?"

Eve opens her eyes, and immediately, they start shooting daggers through Villanelle's. "You're such a dick", she hisses.

Villanelle laughs under her breath. She'd wanted an answer, but hadn't been expecting one, and clearly, won't be getting one. Pouting, she licks Eve's taste off her fingers, then leans down to kiss her forehead, and moves until she's straddling Eve's chest. "You don't have to tell me", she says, and waggles her eyebrows. "I already know." She's not entirely sure, but she has to be right, at least a little; Eve has to think about her, at least as much as she thinks about Eve. She grips Eve's dark hair, tugs on it, making her hiss. Momentarily, she wonders if Eve's actually about to bite her, if she does what she wants, next. "Are you going to be nice?"

"To you? No." And yet, Eve's hands timidly seek out the tops of Villanelle's thighs, move her forward, then down, and Villanelle squeezes her eyes shut, gasps at the wet pressure between her legs, digs her nails all the way into Eve's scalp. It's quick; she's been strung tight for what feels like ages. Her climax makes her see shooting stars behind her eyelids, makes her body shudder and feel both light and heavy at the same time, like she's floating, but could crash at any given moment. "You seemed to like that", she remarks breathlessly as she slumps down next to Eve, who's staring at the ceiling, face messy, breathing shallow.

"No", Eve sighs, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Lying is unattractive", Villanelle chastises as she takes a few deep breaths and stretches out on the bed, purring like a cat. "You liked it."

Eve turns her face away, mutters, "No, I didn't. Don't kid yourself." She gets up to collect her clothes, then rushes to the en-suite, slamming the door shut behind her. Villanelle stares after her, wants to get up, storm the bathroom and remind Eve that lying really _is_ unattractive, not to mention _rude,_ but something stops her, and it isn't the warm glow from her orgasm; she can't fathom why Eve feels like she has to _lie,_ when Villanelle can read her body, read her reactions. Obviously Eve feels conflicted - as she should - about wanting Villanelle to touch her, but denying how it feels doesn't make it any less real, and on top of it all, this time, Villanelle had been sort of _nice;_ she'd taken her precious time, had cataloged which touches made Eve tremble and moan; she'd been considerate, so _why_ won't Eve just give in? What Villanelle does to her feels good, and there's nobody but the two of them in the room, so why won't she beg to be devoured, like Villanelle wants her to?

She keeps wondering after Eve leaves without saying a word, keeps wondering when she should be sleeping, when she should be gathering her strength for her mission. She keeps wondering all through the day after, so before it's time to take out her target, she stops by a florist's, and orders a bouquet of sunflowers to be sent to Eve's workplace. She doesn't add a note, but she imagines the flowers themselves will send the right message, serve as a thank-you for an almost fun date, as a tool to soften Eve up a little so that maybe next time, she won't feel the need to lie; maybe next time, she'll finally beg until her voice is hoarse.

 

* * *

 

Villanelle's kills get cleaner and cleaner while her body grows stronger, grows further away from the incident that had almost claimed her life. Both Ivan, regardless of his judging glares, and her employers seem content with her performance, so in August, Ivan sends Villanelle off to Brussels, The Hauge, Sarajevo, Budapest, Paris; Villanelle murders an interpreter working at the European Union headquarters, a former judge of the International Criminal Court, a Bosnian arms trafficker, a Hungarian sex trafficker, a member of the French liberal party _La République en Marche!_

While in Paris, Villanelle calls Eve, just for the sake of nostalgia.

_"I can't talk right now."_

"So go outside." Villanelle breathes slowly, staring at the ceiling of her hotel room, dabbing her lips with balm. She's in Le Marais, rather far away from her old apartment, but still, she feels strangely at home, feels comfortable. "Why don't you wear clothes that compliment you?" It's something she's always wanted to ask, and she'd been faintly disappointed not to have seen any other pieces but _the_ dress actually be worn by Eve. "I bought you nice things. They would do you justice."

_"I can't believe you're calling me to talk about--you know what, I'm practical. If you don't like the way I dress, I can't help you."_

Eve sounds annoyed. Villanelle wonders if she's refusing to wear the clothes because they're from _her,_ but that would just be stupid. Villanelle had, once upon a time, given Anna all sorts of things, and she'd used them, worn the different garments with an air of pride. Now, Villanelle's in the city where Eve had trashed her wardrobe, and wants to tell Eve so, wants to hear how she'd react, if she'd start apologizing again, but of course, Villanelle can't reveal her location, even though she doubts Eve would do anything with that information, so all she says is, "Fine."

_"Don't get me wrong, the clothes you sent are like--they're beautiful, okay? I'm not being ungrateful, and I know they cost a lot, like, a huge amount of money, god, I don't even make that much money in a month, but I--I just don't know if it's...appropriate? Do you understand where I'm coming from?"_

"Nope", Villanelle says. She's about to hang up, but Eve continues.

_"Did you send the flowers? Were they from you?"_

76 seconds: Villanelle ends the call immediately, reprimanding herself for the single second that'd gone over the limit. She would have liked to stay on the phone for longer, to listen to Eve rambling on and on. She likes Eve's voice when it's low and raspy, not high-pitched and sharp, but there can never be more than small fragments of time, if she wants to remain invisible.

Later, Villanelle wonders why Eve bothers to pick up the phone at all, if she's so keen on hating Villanelle's guts.

 

* * *

 

The Saturday evening before Villanelle kills a British lawyer with Clifford Chance LLP by injecting him with ten milligrams of fentanil in the back of a church during Sunday service, Eve comes to _The May Fair_ hotel, and Villanelle's set on fulfilling at least some parts of her original fantasy; she pins Eve down, ravishes her relentlessly, winds her up with her lips, her tongue, her hands. She uses the belt of her robe to tie Eve's hands together, then bathes in the sounds of Eve's moans bordering on cries, and later, the sound of Eve's mouth between _her_ legs. Still, Eve's voice neither pleads nor begs, but her body does, even more so; she presses into Villanelle's hard touches, thrusts her hips, fights against her restraints, and once she's freed, claws at Villanelle's thighs straddling her, attempts to move her tongue in a way that makes Villanelle's body melt, and succeeds.

Afterwards, Eve closes her eyes and dozes off, but Villanelle, sated and relaxed, stays awake, wondering why something equally wonderful and painful keeps crawling around in her chest while she stares at Eve's sleeping body, and to Villanelle's confusion, upon arrival she'd wanted things to get rough - really rough - but now finds herself longing for tenderness in Eve's touch and voice. She longs for some of Eve's boiling hate to disappear, for Eve to let go of at least a few pieces of her self-loathing, so that she'll be free to enjoy what they do, free to give herself up and not be so ashamed of it. No matter the things that had happened between them - dead friends and folding-knives - the sex was still nice, wasn't it? Wasn't it nice enough to make Eve like her a little more, hate her a little less, hate herself a little less? Those questions in mind, Villanelle reaches over and strokes Eve's hair lightly, trails her fingers through the dark tresses, then down Eve's cheek. She likes the way Eve's skin feels, and suddenly wonders _how_ she'd managed to spend so much time wanting to peel it off, set it on fire, damage it, when now, she wants nothing more than to lean in and press her lips to it, but Eve wakes up, and she flinches, shuffles backwards, gets up and hurries to the bathroom, like Villanelle's gentle touch had burnt her. Villanelle burns, too, at the thought of Eve shying away from her hands; _"I still like you",_ she'd said, but the way she's acting, the way she'd been acting since then, speaks of the complete opposite, and while Villanelle can't wrap her head around herself, she certainly can't wrap her head around Eve, either.

 

* * *

 

Come September and the heavy rains of Amsterdam, Villanelle spends a lot of time at home, staring at the rooftops of the city, willing her mind to stop working, but for some incredibly annoying reason, it won't. She's still focused - more than focused - on her job. The money keeps pouring in, basically allowing her to go where she wants or buy whatever she wants, but she finds herself wanting to go to London, finds herself wanting to buy things for Eve to get her to soften up a little bit, so when her birthday comes up, Villanelle purchases a rather extravagant diamond necklace and ships it to London in the form of an insured express package. She knows, deep down, that Eve most likely will never wear it, but Villanelle thinks she'd look good in it, thinks the chain would highlight the beautiful curve of her neck, and _that's_ what matters; Villanelle's thoughts on which items would look good on Eve, who ought to swallow her self-indignation and pride, and just agree that Villanelle's taste is what should be respected.

_"That thing is a joke."_ Eve doesn't even say hello when Villanelle calls her up a week later.

Villanelle scoffs, staring out through the window, at the rain hammering down. The weather seems to be reflecting her mood. "Then send it back", she mumbles, even though Eve doesn't know where "back" is.

_"No, no, no, that's not what I meant, I just--I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it. I'm not going to the Met Gala, so..."_  Eve sighs, sounds sad, somehow. _"If I wear it, I'm pretty sure someone will chop my head off just to get their hands on that thing, and I'd prefer to keep my head."_ She pauses, then, _"It's not like I haven't lost it already, I'm just saying--"_

Villanelle tries to stay serious, but feels a smile forming on her lips. She wishes Eve would sound this light, be this fun when they're face to face, and not just over the phone. "Happy birthday, Eve."

_"Why'd you get me this?"_

Villanelle sighs, "I can be nice, you know."

There's a long silence on the line, then Eve exhales a breath, and asks, _"Is this some kind of new game I'm supposed to play? What is this?"_

Villanelle hangs up, only 57 seconds in, and focuses her gaze on the dark clouds outside. Yes, she supposes they're playing some kind of a game, but it's not the same game they'd started with, and she has no idea what she'd wanted to accomplish by buying the ridiculously expensive necklace. She'd imagined Eve in it, or more precisely, in nothing but it, but knows she wouldn't get to see that sight even if she asked nicely, because apparently, her being nice is worth fuck all to Eve. As Villanelle lies in bed, sheets up to her waist, she traces her scar with her forefinger, and realizes she has absolutely no clue _where_ her and Eve stand right now, or _what_ she should do next; the idea of dragging Eve out to the French highlands seems far, far away; a realization which makes her move her fingers lower, past her underwear, just to get a moment's distraction from her messy thoughts, her sense of being completely lost, but her own touch feels rough and forced, making her swear out loud; if she can't do _this,_ then Ivan's right, and something's very, very wrong indeed. 


	7. Abyss

On a rainy and cold Friday morning in early October, Villanelle’s just finished packing for her next assignment when there’s a loud knock on her door. Momentarily, she freezes and stares at it like she’s only just noticing it’s there. Reaching into one of the kitchen drawers, she pulls out a slender knife and holds it behind her back as she turns the handle of the door.

It’s Ivan, looking both rushed and grumpy. Villanelle’s face twists into a frown as she lets him in.

“Where the hell did you come from?” she mutters and shuts the door behind him. Her flight to Oslo is leaving in just a little more than two hours. “I was just about to go to the airport. You told me to--”

“You’re not going”, Ivan cuts in, stopping Villanelle’s train of thought. He clasps his hands together diplomatically while looking around her apartment—and avoiding her glare. “The mission has been aborted. No Norway, I’m afraid.”

“But I’m excited about the skiing”, Villanelle says, instead of what she wants to say; she wants to swear. She wants to ask just _who_ the hell he thinks he is—shutting her down just minutes before departure. Four days ago, he’d approached her about flying to Oslo, and from there, making her way to Lillehammer to kill an oil-god named Johan Lund during his vacation. Everything had been sorted: her cover was good and clean, she’d pre-ordered a jeep, and now… “Why, Ivan? What is this?”

“New player in the pool”, Ivan mumbles, glancing at his watch. “Someone beat you to it. Mr. Lund was driven off the road on his way to the airport. Your target…” Ivan scratches his neck and looks at her apologetically, “…has already been taken care of. If you want to go skiing, that’s fine. But you can go to the Alps instead.”

“Someone killed _my_ target?” Villanelle hisses, eyes wide. There’s a funny feeling in her chest; not rage, exactly, but something like disbelief—how dare someone _steal_ from her? Inhaling sharply, she places the knife back into its drawer and slumps down on the couch. “No target means no money. Am I right?”

Ivan remains in the hall, slowly walking back and forth. “You have money.”

“It’s not about that”, Villanelle hisses through her teeth. She’s clenching her fists so hard it hurts. “Who…?”

Ivan shrugs his shoulders. “New player.”

“You already said that.” Villanelle stares at him. She keeps staring until he sighs deeply and comes to sit next to her on the couch. She studies his concerned face and mutters, “Out with it.”

“Private contractor.” Ivan rubs his temples. “Oh, it is very inconvenient, I know. You should not pay it any mind, Villanelle. These things happen from time to time. Someone else had a bone to pick with Lund. They just got to him first.”

“I want a name.” She does. She wants a name and a face for the ridiculous fuck who’d thought himself free to interfere with _her_ job, but if she shows her rage, she knows she won’t get it, so she breathes deeply a couple of times, then makes puppy-eyes at Ivan. “I just want to be in the loop. Don’t I deserve that much?” For good measure, she adds, “Have I not been brilliant these last six months?”

“No one is going to pay you to kill him, so don’t bother”, Ivan says sternly. "The end is the same. Lund is dead, and that is all that matters." He smiles, but Villanelle holds his gaze until he gives up and mumbles, “Dauksa.”

“Thank you!” Villanelle exclaims and jumps up from the couch. She makes her way to her packed laptop and pulls it out, swearing she will find out every single detail about this little shit even if it takes her all night, but when she walks back to the couch, laptop in hand, Ivan snags it out of her grip. “Hey!”

“You’re angry and annoyed and I know what happens when you get like that”, he says as he holds the laptop over his head. Villanelle growls, reaches for it, but he is taller, and the laptop stays out of her reach. “You will get this back tomorrow when you are calm again. Until then, do something relaxing.”

“Give it back”, Villanelle spits as she lunges for it, but Ivan blocks her with his forearm and heads for the front door. Oh, it’s all so, so stupid. Her whole day is so, so stupid, and now there’s real rage in her veins. “Ivan, what am I supposed to do without that?”

“Live”, he replies as he opens the front door. “I was alive when there were no computers. How do you think I survived?”

“Fuck off”, she hisses and turns her back. She doesn’t really mean it, and she knows that Ivan knows she doesn’t mean it, but he doesn’t say anything, and the only sound is the door slamming shut. Groaning, she slumps back down on the couch, body like a sack of potatoes. She’d been excited about the kill. She’d been excited about skiing and snow and hot chocolate with mint. Frustrated, she punches one of the couch pillows.

She thinks about using her mobile app and booking a flight to London. There, she could take all her anger out on Eve by fucking the living daylights out of her, but it dawns on her that she doesn’t, in fact, want to see Eve right now, because taking her frustration out on Eve would mean Eve would fight back just as hard and no, she does _not_ want that. She doesn’t want to fight. She wants compliance. She wants to be allowed to do whatever the hell she wants, and not have to worry about what it all _means_ —a notion which makes her punch the pillow even harder, because what do her and Eve _mean?_ What does their arrangement mean? Or is there even something between them that _could_ mean something? Does Villanelle even want that? Does _Eve_ even want that?

Mirroring Ivan’s earlier actions, Villanelle massages her temples and squeezes her eyes shut. _Damn that guy_ , she thinks. _Dauksa._ If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be at home right now, dealing with…whatever it is she’s dealing with. Oh, he’s got another thing coming, that guy.

Still: damn him.

And damn Eve Polastri, too.

 

* * *

 

Later that same day, when the rainy sky is pitch black, Villanelle, dressed in a white shirt with an ascot collar, a black blazer and skin-tight washed jeans, enters _Air_ —a club not too far from her flat. There's a foreign DJ playing tonight, and the bunker-like club is warm and loud. The walls are covered with metal bar cages, containing dancing men and women in leather clothing, and Villanelle's eyes scan the crowd, trying to single out the person to best suit her needs for the evening. She skips the men altogether - she wants soft skin and smooth curves and submission, not rough stubble and hard muscles and domination - and after a while, her eyes land on a brunette, who looks like she's alone. 

Keeping her focused gaze on her prey, Villanelle works her way through the dancing crowd, stopping a few feet from the woman whose attention she plans on getting. As expected, after just a few moments, their eyes meet for a split second, the woman looks away, but then, her eyes return to Villanelle, and stay on her. _"Goedenavond",_ Villanelle mouths when she gets up close. Now, she can tell the brunette's eyes are dark brown, her lips bow-shaped. Beautiful, if a little shy, a little out-of-place; her stylish top and slacks would put her at a tasteful cocktail-lounge rather than at a rave club. "That's all I know in Dutch", Villanelle says as she leans in to hear the other woman. "What's your name?"

"Eline", the brunette replies, smiling in a manner which tells Villanelle she's nervous. "What's yours?"

Villanelle had decided on using her French name tonight, because she has no intention of bringing anyone to her - or Lisa Meijer's - apartment. "Julie", she says, but doesn't elaborate any more than that. The flashing lights in the club dance over Eline's lovely features, changing the colour of her eyes to turquoise, indigo, vermilion, watermelon. "You're alone?"

Eline looks down at their feet. She's a few inches shorter than Villanelle. "I like the DJ", she confesses, smiling like she's a little ashamed, and Villanelle doesn't understand why. She's not a fan of music herself, but from what she can hear, tonight's beats are quite suitable. "I know I don't look it. I'm a lawyer. Well, an associate at a law firm in Amstel. I just--" She's rambling now, making Villanelle narrow her eyes and listen intently, "--I like to um, what's the word? Wind down, like this. Let off some steam."

Seduction is never difficult. Villanelle had barely been out of her teens when she'd mastered the art of bending both men and women to her will by pulling the right strings, saying the right things, touching the right soft spots, and Eline giving her a confession like that - telling her that Eline has _steam_ to let off - is a clear green light, blinking brightly in the shadows of the club. Villanelle boldly reaches out to grab Eline's drink out of her hand, placing it on a side table. Eline looks surprised, but not upset. She raises her eyebrows at Villanelle, giving her a questioning look. "I want to dance with you", Villanelle declares in her no-bullshit-tone, and it seems to do the trick, because even in the blinking light, the blush on Eline's cheeks is evident, and she lets Villanelle lead her further into the crowd.

The current beat calls for a quicker pace, but Villanelle intentionally slows them down to half of it. Confidently, she lifts Eline's hands up to her own neck, places her own hands on Eline's lower back. She feels her vertebrae, feels the softness of her hips, feels Eline's breath on her lips. It's an intimate sway, two bodies moving like they're one, pressed up against each other. It feels nice, feels exactly like what Villanelle had been yearning for all day, since Ivan’s unfortunate visit, and when Eline's gaze starts flickering between Villanelle's eyes and lips, she knows they won't stay here long.

 

* * *

 

Eline's apartment in Slotermeer is small but sweet; Villanelle's aware of the prices in the area, and while associates must make their fair share, Eline strikes her as a woman who chooses not to invest in the space she probably doesn't spend that much time at, if she wants to have a meaningful career.

"What do you do for work?" Eline asks while she carefully unbuttons Villanelle's shirt.

Villanelle resumes her Parisian identity, runs her fingers over Eline's ribs. "Trading. Numbers and stuff." She won't share any more, won't share that they're currently living in the same city. "I have an early morning meeting, so I can't stay the night. Do you mind?" It’s politeness, nothing else. She’s in the mood to take, but not in the mood to be cruel.

Eline shakes her head and smiles softly while pushing the shirt down Villanelle's arms. She proceeds to run her hands over Villanelle's biceps, breasts, stomach, and pauses when she feels the scar. "Oh", she breathes, staring at it, and then looking up at Villanelle, who's frozen, because she's never had to explain it before. The hacker couple in London had been too busy with each other to actually notice it, and the Ukrainian’s eyes had stayed on her breasts. "What happened to you?"

What happened, indeed; a melancholy smile shows itself on Villanelle's lips. "Mugging", she mutters, and cracks up a little, because yes, Eve had "mugged" her heart right out of her chest. "A long time ago", she adds, and unhooks her own bra to distract Eline, to even out the playing field; now, both are in nothing but their pants.

"It looks fresh", Eline mumbles, her hands on the waistband of Villanelle's jeans.

"It's not." Villanelle covers her lie with a deep kiss, the kind that's slow and languid, lips tasting rather than ravaging, just the slightest brush of tongue. Eline's mouth feels wonderful, her gentle hands even more so as they pull Villanelle's zipper down, push her jeans past her hips. Eline's still nervous - Villanelle can feel it - but this isn't Eline's first time with a woman, and it's a slight relief, even though Villanelle usually prefers the contrary. Tonight, she won't have to guide all that much. Instead, she can focus on commanding, can focus on taking charge, but as she thinks about the things she wants to do, Eline pulls her towards the bed. Submission's got nothing to do with it; she could crack Eline's skull in a matter of seconds, but tonight, she just wants to feel wanted, wants to feel like she’s possessing someone who _wants_ to be possessed.

Once their clothes are off, Villanelle leans her body back into the wool quilt on the bed, lets Eline crawl over her, caress her slowly, mouth at her skin. They don't know each other - hell, Eline doesn't even know her real name - but still, Villanelle imagines there's something reverent about the way Eline touches her body. The lack of dead best friends and knives must do that, and yes, she understands Eve's hate, understands her burning rage, and yet - _yet_ \- she wishes that once, just once, Eve would be like this, would be soft and pliant and happy to touch and be touched by Villanelle. The first time they'd had sex, Eve had touched her like she couldn't get enough, but it hadn't been softness, not like this, not the way Eline kisses her hip bones and her stomach and her _scar._ Eline must have her own reasons for this, this one night stand, but those reasons don't matter to Villanelle, not when Eline's skin is warm, not when her underwear's damp and her breath hitches at the lightest touch and her eyes are filled with _need._

Villanelle flips them over and takes both of their underwear off, then takes her place on Eline's body but keeps her weight light, not wanting to crush or trap her. She straddles a thigh, rubs down, feels the first jolts of pleasure, sighs into Eline's wet mouth, works her hand in between Eline's legs, finds a similar kind of wetness there. "Go inside", Eline gasps, lips brushing Villanelle's. "Please", she adds, and why won't _Eve_ speak so softly, why won't _Eve_ ask nicely, why must she insist upon the war between them?

"You feel amazing", Villanelle groans as she kisses down Eline's neck and carefully pushes her fingers inside, trying to stay in the moment, trying to keep herself from thinking of Eve, who seems to have become the center of her universe, a ghost behind her every thought, and just won't fucking leave her alone, not even for one night. She nuzzles at Eline's full breasts, takes a nipple into her mouth, being careful not to be too rough, and Eline responds in kind, squeezes Villanelle's hips softly, sets a languid rhythm. "Good?"

"Yes." Eline leans her chin down, presses a messy kiss to the top of Villanelle's head. "Really good, keep--" She swallows, arches her back, presses her breasts into Villanelle's lips, "--keep going, don't stop. Please." _Please._ Eve would never say that in bed, would never admit to her want, and suddenly Villanelle wonders if Eve actually wants _her,_ or if she just wants someone as complex as her...someone who can kill, someone who's dangerous and exciting and shit, the thought is like a knife in her stomach, a sharp throbbing behind her scar, and she whines into Eline's chest, thrusts her hips faster. Eline comes with a loud shout, gasping at the ceiling, and when she's done, she gently pushes her palm in between her own thigh and Villanelle, moves her hand softly, then kisses Villanelle's throat when her orgasm—quick and light—finally hits.

"Oh", Eline sighs when they're both finished, when her back's to Villanelle's chest, and Villanelle's index finger is drawing circles on her arm. "I really liked that."

Behind her, Villanelle closes her eyes in defeat, swearing it all to hell: her small satisfaction will be only temporary, and Eve might as well sit in the chair across the room, shaking her head at Villanelle's desperate attempt to heal herself. It's ironic, Villanelle thinks, how only half a year back, Eve had been the one spilling her obsession out in the open, and Villanelle had been the one to gasp _“I really liked you”._ Where they are now, their roles could easily be reversed, and that thought alone is enough to make Villanelle get up, gather her clothes, get dressed and leave without giving Eline the kind of gentle kiss Villanelle had been wishing for since Paris.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for sticking with this guys and god, sorry about the wait. I just moved countries to start my second degree and it is eating up my motivation like crazy, so I hope you enjoyed this second to last chapter of this story. All support is greatly appreciated, as always x


	8. Black Hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, sorry this took a while, life is still hectic but here's the last chapter of the Prelude! As always, old readers and new readers, I sincerely hope you enjoy it! Also, the BTS stuff for Killing Eve. Oh, lord.

Towards the middle of October, Ivan presents Villanelle with another postcard of The London Eye, and this time, Villanelle wants to stomp like a five-year-old. This time, she isn't completely sure whether or not she wants to see Eve. No, naturally, she does want to see her, but she's feeling something like a premonition, a sixth sense that tells her things will not be lighter. If anything, Eve will be dark and angry, reluctant and distressed, looking like she wants to tear Villanelle to pieces.

_...I think about your eyes and your mouth and what you feel when you kill someone..._

Villanelle isn't forcing her to do anything. Villanelle isn't making her do anything. Eve could say no, but she doesn't... because she gets something out of it. It's not a damsel-in-distress scenario at all, and Eve's anything but weak, so there must be something that she gets from Villanelle, something she doesn't get at home, from her boring husband, from her regular and awfully safe life. Villanelle could ask, but asking would signify a change in power. Asking would be an admission of thinking about Eve, and while Villanelle does that all the damn time, she doesn't want Eve to know that, doesn't want her to know that they truly might be the polar opposites of what they'd been last spring.

She wonders if Eve thinks about her at all these days, or if she simply blocks Villanelle out of her mind between their meetings.

Groaning, she rolls out of bed and descends the steps into the living room. It’s not like everything is awful; this past week, she’d done exactly what she’d set out to do; she’d found out every little detail about her new competition, Tomas Dauksa. She’d also managed to crack a little more intel out of Ivan: apparently, Dauksa, or _Kazimieras,_ as he liked to call himself – what kind of a name is _that?_ – would be in London at the same time as her. Upon hearing that, Villanelle’s fists had naturally tightened, but Ivan had been quick to inform her that Dauska would be there for another target, so there should be no interference.

Still, her blood boils as she thinks about him. She’d like to annihilate Dauska probably as much as Eve would like to annihilate her. Sighing deeply, she pulls a bottle of champagne out of the fridge. She’s in no mood to celebrate – there is _nothing_ to celebrate – but apart from tap water, there’s nothing else to drink.

 

* * *

 

According to his file, John Griffiths is fifty-seven years old, married, has two daughters and works as a Deputy Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police in London. He lives in Earls Court together with his wife, and from there, he commutes to the Met headquarters - the New Scotland Yard - in Victoria, and he normally leaves work at 5:45 p.m. on the dot. Villanelle checks in at the _Hilton Olympia_ in Kensington, and from there, she walks to the Earl's Court underground station, gets on the tube and gets off at the Westminster Station. Straight away, it's evident that the best place to kill him is at the city center end, and not the end close to his home. Griffiths has to pass both Big Ben and the ramp of the Westminster Bridge in order to get to the underground station, so the area's going to be crawling with tourists, and therefore, it's her best shot to get him. Why she ought to get him, she doesn't know, but she suspects he's pissed someone off. As usual, she doesn't really care.

Villanelle's decided on a knife; a gun would draw too much attention, and she hadn't brought any poisonous syringes with her. The one thing she can't decide on is whether she should see Eve before or after the kill. She's got a gut feeling that stabbing Griffiths won't feel that euphoric: it'll happen in the street, so she won't have time to actually _watch_ him die. Of course, she could act like a proper serial killer and stay as a bystander, act shocked and watch as the police and the forensics arrive, but that's not her style, and there's no pleasure in staring at someone who's _just_ dead, so in the end, she decides to trust her instincts; she'll see Eve directly after the kill. That way, she'll get at least some sort of satisfaction, unless tomorrow night's the night Eve decides to finally open up about why she still acts like she wants to skin Villanelle alive.

 

* * *

 

The following day, the rain's coming down hard, and Villanelle borrows an umbrella from her hotel's reception. She walks the short distance to the Shepherd's Bush station, from which she takes the tube to Bond Street, and from there, another tube to Westminster. Snickering to herself, she thinks it a little ironic that on her journey to find Eve, she ends up at the station her target will be going to but will never reach once he crosses paths with Villanelle. She feels predatory today, feels alert and on edge; a feeling she welcomes whole-heartedly as she strolls down to Millbank, to Eve's workplace. It's a little before noon, and Eve will either have to go to lunch or return from lunch eventually, so she lingers by the corner of the Burberry store, pretending to be on the phone while keeping an eye on the entrance of Thames House.

As predicted, twenty-five minutes later Eve exits the building together with a nerdy-looking man in his twenties. An assistant of sorts, Villanelle suspects. Both of them have got their own umbrella. At the sight of Eve, her blood starts rushing a little faster, like it always does when Eve's nearby, and quickly, she starts walking towards them, making sure her umbrella hides only half of her face. Eve must have a sixth sense too, because she immediately rotates her body towards Villanelle. There's a look of shock on her face, and then she leans closer to the nerd, whispers something, and he takes off in the opposite direction.

"I thought you’d died", Eve mutters when Villanelle walks up to her. She seems to catch herself, realize what she’d said, because for a second, she looks frightened, but then she quickly adds, "Not that I don’t enjoy your visits. They totally make my day. Jesus, someone could have seen you. What are you doing _here?”_

Villanelle blinks. Blended with the sarcasm, there's a strange sort of – worry? - and it throws Villanelle off.  "Are you sick?" Villanelle blurts out, looking Eve up and down. "You look fine."

"I _am_ fine", Eve says harshly, but she won't meet Villanelle's eyes. "Look, Charlie's waiting for me, so I need to run, or he'll start asking questions. Where are you staying?"

_Oh._ "The _Hilton Olympia"_ , Villanelle replies, "in Kensington. The elevators are locked, so have the desk call my room and I'll come and get you. 501." She studies Eve for a few seconds, wheels turning in her head, trying to figure out why Eve's so calm, trying to figure out why Eve's calmness makes her feel out of sorts. Well, two can play this game. A thought occurs to her, and she leans in closer, dips her head underneath Eve's umbrella. "Bring something with you, this time."

Eve's face goes blank. "What?" she croaks, eyes wide. "What--what do you mean by that?"

Villanelle chuckles, and immediately, she feels a little more in control. She’d always wondered how far Eve would go with her – how far _Eve_ would let her go - if there were no limits, if Eve stripped out of her armour. "Bring something I can use on you." For good measure, she adds, "You've caused _me_ a whole lot of pain. Returning the favour is only fair, right?"

Eve's expression is identical to the one she'd worn at the dinner table months ago, when she'd wanted to know why Villanelle had castrated Anna's husband, and instead of answering, Villanelle had asked her about her sweater-shirt-piece; Eve looks down, sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, and slowly shakes her head. "You're an asshole", she says, but she's not refusing directly. She meets Villanelle's amused stare. "You are _such_ an asshole." With that, she backs up and takes off in the same direction as “Charlie” had gone, and Villanelle feels just a tiny bit victorious as she watches Eve walk away.

 

* * *

 

At 5:30 p.m., Villanelle positions herself at the corner of Great George and Parliament Street. It's still raining, and it'll work to her advantage; the umbrella will protect her facial features as she slams her seven-inch steel blade into John Griffiths' chest. Soon, she'll start walking down the path Griffith usually takes to the station. She'd studied both images and video of him; she knows what sort of clothes he wears, what his stance is like. She'll single him out, and if she fails today, she'll still have two whole days to complete her assignment; Ivan had given her a four-day-window, but she has no plans to fail. She'd done exceptionally well since Paris, and there's no way she'll start slowing down now.

She approaches Big Ben, keeps away from the groups of tourists taking pictures regardless of the pouring rain, squints at the people passing. Her wristwatch reads 5:47; he should show up in just a couple of minutes. Her body tenses, adrenaline pumping, making everyone and everything around her body slow down, and then, a by-now familiar face appears around the corner, after a group of several commuters. Griffith's wearing the same hat he'd worn in several photos - a black Bowler - and he has no umbrella. Stalking forward like a tigress eyeing her prey, Villanelle switches her umbrella to her left hand and hides her right hand in her pocket, squeezing the handle of the knife that's waiting to be pulled out. Griffiths is approaching quickly, just one fish in a shoal of them, so Villanelle slows down, dodges several shoulders, prepares herself for impact. The yards between them become feet, and then--

"Oh, excuse me", she exclaims in her British accent as she bumps into his body and plunges the knife into the middle of his chest with devastating force, then hears the strangled breath that escapes his throat. Her pulse is pounding, her own breath catches at the way he starts to lean on her. "How clumsy of me, dear sir", she mumbles as she pulls the knife out, shoves it into the pocket of her black coat, resumes her walk, and disappears into the swarm of commuters and tourists. She hears the echo of the sound his body makes as it falls over, hears someone screaming. To top off her act, she stops like everyone else, rises on her tiptoes to see what's happening, but when the commotion and the panic start, she follows the crowds, moves away from the body. She does her best to keep the joy off her face, disguising her ecstasy as horror while her head's practically spinning, so satisfied with the neatness of her kill, and oh, what a _good_ day this is; what a good day, and if Eve does as she's told, if she does bring something fun to play with, then this day may very well go down as one of the best of this whole autumn. Crossing her fingers, Villanelle hopes Eve's still brave enough to throw her inhibitions out the window, and while imagining the different objects and tools Eve might be bringing with her to the hotel, Villanelle joins a group of business women heading for another station, and then, like she was never there, she's gone.

 

* * *

 

Not much later, Villanelle’s skin is burning from the hot shower water. Wonder of wonders, it'd stopped raining just before she'd got back to the hotel; the sky had split into a beautiful sunset, but regardless of her umbrella, she'd been freezing in her damp clothes. The shower had felt like heaven, but as she’s combing her wet hair back, it occurs to her that Eve’s submissive behaviour today might actually have been _defeat._

The thought doesn’t sit well with her. Having fun with someone who’s completely lost her spirit is worse than having no fun at all. Villanelle had been so busy wishing Eve would let go of her hate, it hadn’t occurred to her what Eve might really be like without it. She’d wished for softness, wished for something… _normal,_ but Eve might not be soft or normal. Eve might be absolutely broken.

The mirror is fogged up. Villanelle wipes it with the arm of her robe and stares at her own bare face.

What does she want? 

_…I think about you all the time…_

She’s two seconds away from actually smashing the mirror to pieces. Yes, she wants to mess with Eve’s head every now and then, but she wants Eve to _want_ to think about her. What is that? Is that obsession? Is that infatuation? Whatever that is, she doesn’t want Eve to fight but she doesn’t want her to be phlegmatic or spineless either, she doesn’t – _what?_

“Damn”, she mumbles and closes her eyes. She’d felt so good earlier, but now she’s not entirely sure that seeing Eve tonight is such a brilliant idea after all. She’d like to get back in the shower, soak herself under the hot stream, just _be,_ but Eve will be here soon. She always shows up.

She _always_ shows up.

It must be self-torture.

It must be some sort of not-so-subtle sadism, if Eve really doesn’t like her at all. 

Cursing quietly, Villanelle fastens the belt of her robe and pushes the bathroom door open, letting the fog out.

Eve is sitting on her bed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit you guys, this is over now! I can't believe this series is way over 100K words, but oh boy, it feels so good to finally complete this part. Special thanks to everyone who read, left kudos and commented on both this and 'The Void' (which starts off exactly where this chapter here ended). There's a little 'Postlude' in the works, but no timetable is set. Also, five months to go until season 2! I hope you're all as excited as I am! Of course, season 2 coming out (and hopefully following the plot of the second book, hint hint) means this whole series will have to be re-done and I don't know how I'm gonna pull that off, but oh hell, I'll worry about that then. Again, thank you, you wonderful people in the KE-fandom! - Dani


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